The Business of Publishing … Yes It Is!

When John Kremer, Rick Frishman and Judith Briles published Show Me About Book Publishing, they shared a story about Sally. Sally wanted to open a Sewing Shoppe. Her objective was to be successful.

What if you were Sally and wanted to open Sally’s Sewing Shoppe? Wouldn’t it make sense that you knew about sewing? About the machine and how it works? Maybe inkling about fabric types? How about sewing accessories?  If you wanted to open Sally’s Sewing Shoppe, your answer would be yes. And so must the other three questions that were asked: you should be answering yes, yes and yes.

Viva the Difference

When you self-publish, and you contract with an AuthorHouse, Author Solutions, iUniverse, Xlibris or a LuLu, you are sharing the profit.

Their name is on the door, not yours. Whoosh—with the use of their name, you could easily see 50 percent plus of your profits exit overnight just because you used their name … and you didn’t think you knew enough to do it yourself … or your didn’t think you had enough money (or didn’t want to) to front the start up expenses of your publishing enterprise. Or didn’t want to learn some of the ins and outs of publishing.

With self and independent publishing, you are opening a business. If Sally’s Sewing Shoppe needs a sewing machine repair person, a seamstress or a specialist in designing kid’s costumes, it hires a person who can fill the bill on a fee basis—each job has a cost to it.

Hopefully, the cost of the services will be far less than the revenues that are created. What’s left over is the profit. Yours—all of it. It’s the same in publishing. Seamstresses, sewing machine repairs and kid’s costume designers can be likened to editors, cover designers and printers. You have a job that needs to be done; they bid on it.

You hire who you want and pay them on completion. You don’t share your profits with them. When you use today’s modern vanity presses—LuLu, AuthorHouse, Author Solutions, iUniverse, Xlibris, etc., your profitability is severely limited.

As the owner of Sally’s Sewing Shoppe, you could hire, and fire, vendors and suppliers. You make all the decisions. If you don’t want to work with or use someone, you go somewhere else.  It’s still your place, Sally’s Sewing Shoppe.

Not so with vanity press and pay to publish operations. When you publish through anything that doesn’t have your name, you lose that option. You get to start over if you decide you don’t like the establishment.  New ISBN, new files, new cover design— new, new, new.

Publishing is a business. Period. If you are serious about publishing, you wouldn’t think of it any other way. It’s not something you do to fill your time. It’s not something you do to share cocktails with friends of chit-chat over a cup of coffee. And it’s not something that should be viewed as an encounter of a casual kind.

Publishing takes money. It takes time. It takes an investment and commitment from you.

Author U has your marketing answers/solutions. It’s at the Extravaganza in just four short weeks from now: May 3-5.  Fiction, Nonfiction, eBook or pBook. You can have all workshops for $424 (non-members $574—it’s still a heck of a deal and remember, all meals are included.

Please … Register—there are less than 10 seats left—it’s the business of publishing: Author U (niversity)

Judith Briles is known as The Book Shepherd, a book publishing coach and the Founder of Author U (niversity) a membership organization created for the serious author who wants to be seriously successful. She’s been writing about and conducting workshops on publishing since the 80s. She’s the author of 30 books including Show Me About Book Publishing, co-written with John Kremer and Rick Frishman and a speaker at publishing conferences. Her next audio and workbook series, Creating Your Book and Author Platform will be available in the Spring of 2012. Join Judith live on Thursdays at 6 p.m. EST for Your Guide to Book publishing on the www.RockStarRadioNetwork.com. Follow @AuthorU and @MyBookShepherd on Twitter and do a “Like” at AuthorU and TheBookShepherd on Facebook. If you want to create a book that has no regrets, contact her at Judith@Briles.com.

  If you are looking for FREE author and book coaching … call in to Judith’s Author Monday Mornings at NOON Eastern each Monday. The number is 218-632-9854; Access Code 1239874444 … have your questions ready–there’s a full hour to ask and listen.