Publishing Options

Congratulations! You've finished your book and want to have it published. Now what?

The first thing you need to do is determine what sort of author you want to be:

someone who anticipates selling their family memoir or cookbook to a relatively small group of people?

someone who wishes to sell books commercially on the internet?

someone who wants to be a blockbuster author with a 20-city tour, an appearance on Oprah, and a movie deal? Well, we all can dream, can't we?

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OK, if you're in the first group, you're almost certainly going to be taking the initiative to publish your baby, because a traditional press such as Random House won't be interested. Unless you are a desktop publisher (not an unreasonable solution), your best option is probably to go to a vanity/subsidy press that will walk you through the publishing maze, give you a certain number of books, and maybe even get your book available on the internet so your friends can purchase it easily.

There are a few types of companies:

Lulu.com -- if you're handy with the computer, you can set up your book for no cost; charges are taken from the sales price only when and if you sell a book. You keep ownership of your own files. This is a great deal! The books you produce will be somewhat higher in price than the typical market prices, but this won't matter because you're only selling to specified people anyway.

A comprehensive company -- I have no personal experience with these, so while I'd like to recommend some I don't feel I can. These companies will help you with a variety of tasks that may include: some editing, typesetting, cover design, ISBN purchase, online availability, etc. I would simply advise that you check out several before you sign with one. Mark Levine HERE has compared a number of companies and ranked them; I highly recommend you read this book to get a feel for what these companies can and cannot do, and what you need to look out for.

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If you are in the second category, you need to be more careful about how you will publish. This is NOT an easy decision: there are significant positives and negatives to each option. Broadly, your options are:

1. Traditional Publishing

2. Vanity/Subsidy Publishing

3. Self-Publishing

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Let's look at some advantages and disadvantages today.

Traditional publishing is a difficult field to break into, but if you can make it, it offers significant advantages over other types of publishing. Some positives I can think of are that your manuscript will have been edited multiple times, and therefore your published book will be something to be very proud of. You will have a beautiful cover, and the backing of a company that will help to launch your book. Furthermore, your book will automatically be considered *worthwhile* because you have a name behind you. Your book will be available in brick and mortar stores, and you may even be able to wrangle a book tour or other publicity opportunities out of your publisher. You will have been paid advance money, and will not have to pay for anything else for the book.

The biggest drawback to traditional publishing that I can think of is that you no longer own your book. If the publisher wants to change text, or discontinue the run, or do anything else, you can't prevent them. I've heard a few horror stories: one friend was upset because she'd been told her editor was changing the ending of her book about 24 hours before it went to press. "I don't want my name on it," she said. Fortunately this snafu was resolved to everyone's satisfaction before the book was printed. The nephew of another friend sold a manuscript to a publisher that then decided not to publish it. He had planned a series but was unable to do so without the first book, and couldn't get the rights back. I have two friends who wrote a wonderful Christmas book. They sold out their first printing quickly and were on a roll with appearances when the publisher informed them another printing would not be done. These are perhaps not typical stories, but they do happen.

Vanity/Subsidy publishing varies quite a bit in quality and cost. Some advantages are that final books can be produced within a matter of weeks, and they usually look pretty decent (although covers often leave much to be desired). Often the book is available for sale on amazon and/or other online venues. However, if I wanted to sell books beyond a small group I personally would not consider this type of publishing. There is a stigma, the books are expensive, the author usually pays more than he should to get the book produced, the author often gives up some rights to the book that he may want later, and on and on. Publishing this way will not allow you to be commercially competitive.

A special subset under this group is Publish America. I've already written a blog entry about this company HERE. PA tries to look like a traditional publisher because they pay $1 advance and don't charge the author anything, but the company also buys ALL rights to the book for seven years. There are so many complaints about PA that I would personally never consider going here. You've been warned.

Your final option is self-publishing, where you form your own company. The major advantage of self-publishing is that you have complete control to produce an excellent product and keep all rights to it. The downside is that you've got to coordinate everything yourself, and believe me there are a lot of details. It can be expensive; although it doesn't have to be, you WILL spend at least some money. Furthermore, you are dependent solely on your platform and marketing contacts in order to get the book sold, because there is no one else.

I'll be looking at how to go about traditional publishing tomorrow.

Ownership: The ISBN, Digital Rights, and Self-Publishing

Today I want to talk about the vanity/subsidy publisher versus the self-publisher in regards to the registration of the book.

When you are thinking of publishing your own book, there are several options. Many people read the advertisements in a writing magazine, and without researching options simply go to one of these: a company that they pay in order to publish their book. Quality of services ranges from excellent to steal-you-blind; Mark Levine has written a helpful book comparing 45 companies HERE, but there are so many that he only scratches the surface. Strictly speaking, publishing with one of these companies is NOT self-publishing: it is vanity/subsidy publishing. You are a self-publisher only if YOU are the publisher.

The publisher becomes important when considering the ISBN. The ISBN, also known as the International Standard Book Number, is like a book's social security number: it is a unique identifier that is forever linked to your book. The ISBN is necessary to engage in generalized commerce in bookstores, online, and other venues -- in other words, you can sell a book by hand without an ISBN, say cookbooks at a community function, but that's it.

Pick up any book on your shelf. On the back cover you should see a white box with two bar codes, and also several strings of numbers. The larger barcode on the left encodes the book's ISBN, a 13-digit number beginning with *978* if it's published in the USA. Since the system recently switched to 13 digits, each book also has a 10-digit ISBN although it may not be printed on the book. The smaller barcode on the right encodes the book's price in a five digit number. The number is *90000* indicates no price specified.

Since the ISBN identifies the publisher, unless you have bought the ISBN from RR Bowker (if you publish in the USA), the book is not considered *yours.* I want to quote this section from the United States ISBN Agency, the official source for ISBNs in the USA:

Who can assign ISBNs to a publisher?

There are over 160 ISBN Agencies worldwide, and each ISBN Agency is appointed as the exclusive agent responsible for assigning ISBNs to publishers residing in their country or geographic territory. The United States ISBN Agency is the only source authorized to assign ISBNs to publishers supplying an address in the United States, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and Puerto Rico and its database establishes the publisher of record associated with each prefix.

Once an ISBN publisher prefix and associated block of numbers has been assigned to a publisher by the ISBN Agency, the publisher can assign ISBNs to publications it holds publishing rights to. However, after the ISBN Agency assigns ISBNs to a publisher, that publisher cannot resell, re-assign, transfer, or split its list of ISBNs among other publishers. These guidelines have long been established to ensure the veracity, accuracy and continued utility of the international ISBN standard.

As defined by the ISO Standard, the ISBN publisher prefix (or "root" of the ISBN) identifies a single publisher. If a second publisher subsequently obtains an ISBN from the assigned publisher's block of ISBNs, there will be no change in the publisher of record for any ISBN in the block as originally assigned. Therefore, searches of industry databases for that re-assigned ISBN will identify the original owner of that assigned prefix as the publisher rather than the second publisher. Discovering this consequence too late can lead to extensive costs in applying for a new prefix, re-assigning a new ISBN, and potentially leading to the application of stickers to books already printed and in circulation.

If you are a new publisher, you should apply for your own ISBN publisher prefix and plan to identify and circulate your books properly in the industry supply chain. You may encounter offers from other sources to purchase single ISBNs at special offer prices; you should be wary of purchasing from these sources for the reasons noted above. There are unauthorized re-sellers of ISBNs and this activity is a violation of the ISBN standard and of industry practice. A publisher with one of these re-assigned ISBNs will not be correctly identified as the publisher of record in Books In Print or any of the industry databases such as Barnes and Noble or Amazon or those of wholesalers such as Ingram. If you have questions, contact the US ISBN Agency for further advice.

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For me, this ownership of the ISBN was the deal-breaker that made me decide to form my own publishing company. Did you catch what this statement above says? Basically, the company that publishes your book, forever will be the official publisher on record. YOU CANNOT TRANSFER THE ISBN, and YOU CANNOT BUY THE ISBN FROM THE COMPANY, no matter what they say. The book is linked to THEM, not to you. If you want to break your contract with the publisher for whatever reasons to go to a different company, the book will still be registered to the first company. To unlink the book you'll need to get a brand new ISBN and start from scratch: your marketing efforts done earlier will be for naught.

Another common problem with vanity/subsidy publishing is that usually the author doesn't own the cover, the typesetting, the illustrations -- none of the physical files. If you want to leave this company for whatever reasons, you will walk away with nothing. The book will need to be re-typeset and a new book cover designed, as well as obtaining a new ISBN.

Ron Pramschufer, a self-publisher, writes an article about this HERE.

Deciding to go outside of a traditional publisher is a serious decision that must be carefully evaluated. You need to realize from the start that the odds are severely against you, especially for marketing fiction. These two landmines I discuss today are a few among many as you start to look into producing your own book.