I’ve been asked by several clients over the years what the best approach is when they decide to take a book to market. Countless times I’ve told the same story over and over again with the same fire and ambition and passion as I’ve told it before much like a broken record.

Every Highschool Student’s Dream of “getting signed”

Those who aren’t familiar with the story of “The artist formerly known as prince” may not know why he chose to call himself that. Fact is that Sony BMG Music owned the rights to his name. He signed to a major record label much like every new artist dreams of doing. What he didn’t know was the darkside to this future.

In the beginning, signing to a major record label is a dream… They’ve got the funding and the existing media exposure to setup tours, promote tours, buy equipment, hire the best graphic designers and assemble a team for mass promotion at lighting speed. Nothing could be better for your career, right?

It’s the same in the book world. A publisher will have extensive media contacts that go back generations. They’ll have the best graphic designers who know how to make book covers look like something amateurs only dream of designing.
They’ll have editors that never miss a spelling or grammar mistake and they’ll have connections to getting things out there quick…

So what’s the downside of “getting signed”

Most publishers prefer to sign exclusive deals… sometimes on the one book, sometimes on the entire author name like in the case of “The artist formerly known as prince” he actually sold his entire name to Sony BMG Music. When they decided they nolonger wished to promote his music that was it. Because they owned the name they could decide that they not only didn’t want to market him any further, he couldn’t market it himself either as they owned the rights. They were not willing to let go of the rights, or let him produce any more music.

From a business perspective you can see a publisher deciding this, and yet not being willing to give you another chance either. They may decide this because from a business perspective after so many millions go into promotions and fall on dead years and make no more money or sales they may figure there’s no more point in trying even though you yourself may wish to continue!

In these cases there are no second chances. You’ve got a new style? Got a new song? Got a new book idea, or a new way to promote your existing book? Too bad they own it and if they’re not on board you’ll have a long road convincing them.

What prince did…

Prince decided to copyright “The artist formerly known as prince”. They may have owned the rights to the name “prince” but they didn’t own the rights to the new name… Yet fans would instantly recognize what the new name meant meaning he could retain his old audience but under a copyright that he owned the rights to. Thus a star was able to re-birth himself with lots of lawyering and up hill battles.

YOU can avoid those uphill battles!!!

By self publishing a book you do own the rights entirely, but it does come with it’s drawbacks. While you actually can do whatever you want to promote the book and decide to never give up marketing it… You’ll also have to come up with the money and drum up your own media contacts to get the promotion engine fired up.

What does a publisher do?

Leverage media contacts – They’ve been in touch with the media for years and that leverage can be copied to some respect but not 100% the same. What I mean is, you can leverage a PR agency or even publish your own press releases using release services that have similar contacts within the industry. The difference is you won’t get as much earplay as publishers… Publishers are known for producing a certain quality of content, so you will have to basically sell journalists and PR agencies on the quality of your material. That’s not impossible, but be aware of it.

Money – It’s without a doubt a challenging aspect. You probably don’t have millions of dollars so you won’t be able to get a full time graphics guy to design your stuff to the exacting qualities of a publisher. But quite a few freelancers can come awful close and design some pretty good stuff. This is a challenge but not a show stopper.

Publishing/Printing – There’s such a thing as print-on-demand services like Lulu and Cafepress that will print your book for you. They’ll print 5 copies if that’s all you sell or 500. Logically the more books you sell the better price you’ll get on the printing of each individual book. The other thing is the quality does suffer a little bit, they’re not QUITE as well done as a company that does a run of 1000 books or more. BUT… you can start this way and if your selling lots of books switch to getting a run of 1,000 done up or more.

Editorial - You’ll want to get it professionally edited or you won’t be taken seriously. It’s possible to hire recent english majors from a university that just got out of school too but you’ll want to be sure they love the topic and got high marks.

Reviews – Another thing publishers often have is a network of well known authors that can endorse your work on the back dust jacket by giving them review copies. Often review copies aren’t as polished as the final product but it’s the content being judged not the look of the material so that’s fine. You’ll have to manually contact noted authors and hope they’re as fired up about your material and topic as you are. That will require some sales and marketing in the print (mailed documents and letters) and emails, but again not impossible. Something I love doing and my team does too.

Getting on Amazon, Barnes and noble and leveraging the affiliates and resellers that exist joined to the affiliate programs of Amazon and barnes and noble isn’t impossible and there’s many websites that exist solely to promote books on these services. Getting on Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble’s “Nook” product and lots of other e-readers isn’t hard either..

Hope that gives you a long hard look into self publishing. It’s not an impossible road but certainly not an easy one but it yeilds more fruit and more money in the long run as you retain more royalties and more money than any other way.

How do you get the promotion money without signing your soul away?

Our team can help you with these aspects if you wish – AND there are independent book programs out there that even have contests and awards where you could win up to $100,000 in sponsorship to help promote your new book if you submit your new works and they win awards… Indie awards mean you could get money to promote your book without having to sign your name off to someone.