Self-publishing

Not to be confused with Samizdat.

Self-publishing is the publishing of books and other media by the authors of those works, rather than by established, third-party publishers. Although it represents a small percentage of the publishing industry in terms of sales, it has been present in one form or another since the beginning of publishing and has seen an increase in activity with the advancement of publishing technology, including xerography, desktop publishing systems, print on demand, and the World Wide Web. Cultural phenomena such as the punk/DIY movement, the proliferation of media channels, and blogging have contributed to the advancement of self-publishing.

Business aspects

The key distinguishing characteristic of self-publishing is the absence of a traditional publisher. Instead the creator or creators fulfill this role, taking editorial control of the content, arranging for printing, marketing the material, and often distributing it, either directly to consumers or to retailers. Less often, the author prints the material, usually using a xerographic process or a computer printer. In some cases, books are printed on demand with no inventory kept. This places the bulk of the financial risk for the venture on the creators, with many self-publishers ultimately subsidizing it rather than making money from it.

With the advancement of digital printing technology from Indigo N.V. and digital photography, the self-publishing concept has become mainstream in digital photo book printing. Firms like Apple’s iPhoto, FotoInsight, Snapfish and Printing-1 supply individually printed photo books on demand.

Types of self-publishing

True self-publishing

True self-publishing requires authors to undertake the entire cost of publication themselves and to handle all marketing, distribution, storage, etc. Self-publishing can be more cost-effective than vanity or subsidy publishing and can result in a much higher-quality product because authors can put every aspect of the process out to bid rather than accepting a preset package of services. Also, unlike subsidy publishing, the completed books are the writer's property, and the writer keeps 100 percent of sales proceeds .

Subsidy publishers

A subsidy publisher distributes books under its own imprint and therefore selective in deciding which books to publish. Subsidy publishers, like Vanity publishers, take payment from the author to print and bind a book, but contribute a portion of the cost as well as adjunct services such as editing, distribution, warehousing and some degree of marketing . Oftentimes, the adjunct services provided are minimal. As with commercial publishers, the books are owned by the publisher and remain in the publisher's possession and authors receive royalties from any copies of the book that are sold. Most subsidy publishers also keep a portion of the rights from any book that they publish. Generally, authors have little control over production aspects such as cover design .

Print on Demand (POD)

Main article: Print on demand

Short run printing is also called Print-on-demand (POD) or Print Quantity Needed (PQN) printing. POD publishers, many of whom are web-based, generally do not screen submissions prior to publication. They accept uploaded digital content as Microsoft Word Documents, text files or RTF files and are primarily printing services for anyone who is willing to pay . Authors choose from a selection of packages or design a unique printing package that meets their requirements. For an additional cost, many POD publishers offer users services such as book jacket design with professional art direction; content, line, and copy-editing; indexing; proofreading; and marketing and publicity services. In addition, some POD publishers offer publication as e-books in addition to hardcover and paperback. Some POD publishers offer ISBN (International Standard Book Numbers) services in which a title will be assigned an ISBN number allows a title to be made searchable and listed for sale on websites.

Many critics dismiss POD as another type of vanity press, preying solely on an author's desire for publication. One major difference though, is that POD publishers have a connection to retail outlets like Amazon and Books in Print that vanity presses generally do not .

Vanity publishing

Main article: Vanity press

Self-publishing is sometimes difficult to differentiate from "vanity publishing." The latter term is a pejorative one, usually referring to situations in which a publisher contracts with authors regardless of the quality and marketability of their work. They appeal to the creators' vanity and desire to become a "published author," and make the majority of their money from fees charged to the creators for publishing services, rather than from sales of the published material to retailers or consumers. Vanity presses often try to disguise themselves, calling themselves "joint venture" or "subsidy" presses (neither term is accurate; in a vanity press arrangement, the author undertakes all of the risk (unlike a joint venture), and pays 100% of the cost of publication (unlike in a true subsidy arrangement)). Sectors of the self-publishing movement are aware of the pitfalls of working with "vanity presses." For example, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America website maintains one of the most comprehensive scam-alert sections in the publishing industry, and works hard to keep writers and potential writers aware of the risk of being scammed by duplicitous vanity presses. In his guide for would-be self-publishers, How to Publish Yourself, author Peter Finch unequivocally states that such presses are "To be avoided at all costs."

So-called vanity presses may not necessarily engage in deception or fraud, however, and some creators knowingly and willingly enter into such deals, placing more importance on getting their work published than from profiting from it. Because there is no independent entity making a judgment about their quality, and because many of them are published at a loss, self-published works are often perceived as equivalent to vanity-press works, or equally deserving of skepticism from distributors, retailers, or readers.

Printing and production quality

Many self-published books utilize printing and binding techniques which are chosen for their suitability for short press runs. They may be printed with a xerographic process rather than offset printing. In many cases, the covers are designed by amateurs, or a standardized template is used, rather than a higher-quality professional cover designer. Recently, the majority of the self- and subsidy-published books have been perfect bound, although some are hardbound, and some are still saddle-stitched (large metal staples in the fold), comb or coil bound. Technology has enabled high-quality short-run print jobs to be less expensive, although they are still more expensive per copy than longer, off-set printings.

Because professional-quality typesetting suites, such as LaTeX, are available as free software, the typesetting of a self-published book may be as good as a traditionally published work. However, these tools require some technical skill, and many self-published works are formatted using a word processor, which can give less appealing results by comparison. The development of relatively low-cost desktop publishing software has put more powerful tools in the hands of self-publishers, but without any guarantee that they will be used to professional standards.

Authors using lower-cost, short-run techniques are often focused on content rather than appearance. They may wish to avoid a polished appearance for reasons that have little to do with cost, such as maintaining an anti-establishment aesthetic.

Recently the very short run, usually xerographic, printing techniques are approaching off-set quality for black and white, non-halftone jobs. There are still visible differences for more complicated work.

Because bookstores believe that cover appearance and content are important for successful sales, self-publishing authors that plan to distribute their books through mainstream distributors and bookstores often strive to achieve an overall appearance similar to that of the major publishing houses. This in turn mandates a larger initial press run, usually offset, if the endeavor is to be profitable, because of the expense involved in getting professional level design and editorial work. On the other hand, many successful self-publishers avoid traditional retail outlets altogether, and market directly to their target audience.

Obstacles

Promotion and marketing of self-published books are critical. Authors must undertake book publicity which means developing lists of editors and book reviewers within various media, as well as looking for ways to get coverage "off the book page."

There are several other difficulties faced by self- and small-publishers. Bookstores cannot afford to deal with tens of thousands of small publishing companies. They tend to buy from the larger publishers, distributors, and wholesalers. But even these aggregators cannot deal with the recent flood of new publishers. The competition to get into bookstores is extreme, and the terms of trade (discounts and return privileges especially) can be financially onerous.

Self-published books do not necessarily reveal their origin. Subsidy press books do, via the ISBN records or the imprint. Therefore, subsidy published books may face additional obstacles on the way to the bookstore shelf, beyond those discussed above.

Dismissal of self-publishing by the Library of Congress

The United States government, via the Library of Congress’ Cataloging-in-Publication program states that self-published and vanity-press books are not eligible for the catalogue, thus placing them at a fundamental disadvantage in the marketplace, and blocking them from a huge segment of it. While this policy has been challenged in the courts, the Library of Congress has thus far successfully defended its position that self-published and vanity manuscripts are not really books.

Motives for self-publishing

There are a number of reasons that writers choose to self-publish, although one of the most common is that their work is not of interest to a commercial publisher. Publishers must be confident of sales of several thousand copies to take on a book. An otherwise worthy book may not have this potential for any number of reasons:

• author wishes to retain complete editorial control over content
• author is unknown and does not have substantial resume
• popular topic but of interest only in a small geographic area
• addresses an obscure topic in which few people are interested
• content is controversial enough that publishers do not wish to be associated with it
• author wishes to obtain a larger percentage return from retail sales

Occasionally authors choose to self-publish for reasons of control, because they want access to their customer list, or because they love the business of publishing. When working with a publisher, an author gives up a degree of editorial control, and sometimes has little input into the design of the book, its distribution, and its marketing. This has been a substantial motivator in the rise of comic book self-publishing. In the late 1970s, creators such as Dave Sim and Wendy and Richard Pini chose -- in spite of offers from publishers -- to publish their work themselves because they wanted to retain full ownership and control over it, and they believed they could do the job of publishing more effectively than a publisher that did not have an ownership stake in the material. This was facilitated by the development of comic book specialty shops, and the distribution network that serves them, which is more open to small- and self-publisher material than traditional bookstores have been. Numerous cartoonists have followed their example since then, and by the late 1990s, the majority of comics (in terms of titles) were self-published. They remain a small percentage of overall sales, however, with sales of a given book often falling short of 1000 copies. A similar movement took place in the music industry during the same period, coming largely out of the punk rock phenomenon, as some musicians eschewed deals with record labels and published their own recordings.

In addition to the issue of control some authors with limited markets may also self-publish in order to obtain a better financial return. Authors in a specialist area may be confident of a certain number of sales but also realise that the maximum number of sales is limited, and wish to maximise their earnings. In this situation authors may risk a significant amount of their own capital to self-publish their own work. This avoids a publisher taking a significant cut of the proceeds and if also self-distributed avoids distribution fees as well. The payoff is a much larger percentage of the sale price being returned as profit.

In recent years, television writer and producer J Michael Straczynski has self published an extremely successful series of books containing his scripts for Babylon 5, his most famous television creation.

Business professor Philip M. Parker has patented a method to automatically produce a set of similar books from a template that is filled with data from database and internet searches. He self-publishes these books and prints them on demand. In January 2008 he was listed as the author of 85,000 books at Amazon.com.

John Milton on self-publishing

The first systematic defense of one’s right to publish, John Milton’s self-published Areopagitica of 1644, identified three areas of tension, political, business, and academic, that render self-publishing highly controversial.

Survival of an ideology-based state hinges on its tight control of ideas, which is impossible to affect if self-publishing is allowed: “it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men … I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous Dragons teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men.”

Business-wise, a viable option of self-publishing undermines the entire business model used by publishers, “publicans that have the tunaging and the poundaging (i.e., taxing) of all free spoken truth,” in which publisher wedges himself between the author and the public, and uses his position as marketplace’s gatekeeper to take most of the profits generated by sales of a book.

And finally, self-publishing flies in the face of the notion of professionalism, which acknowledges only the credentialed authorities in a given subject-matter as permissible contributors to the public debate and public instruction. As to the non-professionals, “What need they torture their heads with that which others have taken so strictly, and so unalterably into their own purveying”?

Dismissal of self-publishing by the Library of Congress

The US government, via the Library of Congress’ Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) program states that self-published books are not eligible for the program. The CIP program catalogs works that are likely to be acquired by the majority of the nation’s libraries. In 2006, the “library community ranked video discs, audio discs, multimedia packages, mass market paperbacks, and other types of publications ahead of self-published works.”The Library of Congress dismisses self-published books based on the assumption that they are not likely to be acquired by libraries, therefore putting them at a fundamental disadvantage in the marketplace, and blocking them from a huge segment of it. This policy is currently being challenged in courts

Self-published best-sellers

Self-published works that find large audiences tend to be rare exceptions, and are usually the result of self-promotion. However, many works now considered classic were originally self-published, including the original writings of William Blake, Virginia Woolf, Walt Whitman, William Morris, and James Joyce.

• The Celestine Prophecy by James Redfield
• A Choice, Not An Echo by Phyllis Schlafly
• The Joy of Cooking by Irma Rombauer
• What Color is Your Parachute by Richard Nelson Bolles
• In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters
• The Christmas Box by Richard Paul Evans
• Invisible Life by E. Lynn Harris
• The Visual Display of Quantitative Information by Edward Tufte
• Contest by Matthew Reilly
• Eragon by Christopher Paolini (The book later became published the traditional way, through Knopf. A series of sequels follows the same story, but aren't self published the same way this first book was.)
• You Are Here by Steve Horsfall

Other well-known self-publishers include: Stephen Crane, e.e. cummings, Deepak Chopra, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey, Rudyard Kipling, D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Paine, Edgar Allan Poe, Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, George Bernard Shaw, Upton Sinclair, Gertrude Stein, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.

External links

• Self-publishing at Curlie