Print on Demand -- Some of My Experiences in Self-Publishing

Print-On-Demand - Some of My Experiences in Self-Publishing

Writing Gina's Dream and self-publishing it as an eBook on Smashwords was an education in: writing; formatting; finding and working with editors and book cover designers; learning new software and applications; ISBNs; distribution, and promotion.

Producing El Sueño de Gina continued my education in POD publishing and translation.

I was lucky, a friend had his book published through The Write Place (TWP), after a bit of research, I thought they did a good job printing and distributing his book, so I published El Sueño de Gina through them as a POD, in a dual book format, at a reasonable cost.

The dual book format is old school but as time goes on, it becomes new, again. Half the book is Gina's Dream, in English, the other half is El Sueño de Gina, in Spanish. It has two covers, one on the front and one on the back. Flip the book and you see the other version.

My education expanded into finding and working with a translator, producing and proofing a manuscript in Spanish and I don't speak enough Spanish to order a sandwich, so it was like diving into the unknown. But, it turned out well, particularly because I had a great translator and TWP handled the job professionally and with ease.

But, things in the POD/eBook Publishing world continue to change rapidly. That was in 2015, now in 2019, I re-researched my POD options for Recetas de una Mujer Maya Modern, a Spanish cookbook, by a friend.

I got a quote from TWP, while it was a reasonable quote, it was too much for me, for a small book.

Essentially, to save money, a self-published author needs to juggle a lot of tasks and learn a lot of skills in formatting for various publishing software and more.

A self-published author is not only a writer, but, an editor, publisher, researcher, marketeer, accountant, web/blog/graphic designer, administrator, and more. If you can't handle these tasks well and have to contract out for any of these services, that's how your costs increase.

Yet, these are decisions every self-published author faces, especially if they feel they have created a "bestseller."

In articles, surveys and reports on Self-publishing, it is often the "Best Sellers" that garner the attention but these same pieces often note that most self-published authors do not sell many books.

As seen in the Wikipedia's Topic on Self-Publishing :

"The largest, by far, percentage of authors are making less than $500 a year self-publishing, because there’s a glut. There’s over 350,000 books being self-published every year and readers are not finding them. There’s just no way to expose people to all of these books. — Novelist M.J. Rose in 2012” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing)

Unless, the author makes enough income from their book sales to cover the expenses in creating their work and more, whether it's an eBook or POD, it is still vanity publishing.

For example, according to the Authors Guild's 2018 Survey of authors, it claims while the number of self-published authors has increased, their income has not, in fact, it has decreased.

"While self-published authors were the only group to experience a significant increase (up 95% in book-related income from 2013 to 2017), self-published authors as a whole still earned 58% less than traditionally published authors in 2017.

Among the authors surveyed who ranked in the top decile for author-related earnings, self-published authors earned 50% less with a median of $154,000 compared to traditionally published authors in the top decile who earned a median of $305,000. Note that the median 2017 author-related income of $10,050 for self-published romance and romantic suspense writers is almost five times higher than the $1,900 median author-related income for the next highest-earning self-published genre category of mysteries and thrillers.

Moreover, the median author-related income for self-published romance and romantic suspense writers was only $50 more in 2017 than in 2013, which may indicate that self-published romance writers as a group have reached a plateau for earnings under current business models."


Authors Guild 2018 Survey (survey based on 5,000+ published authors): (https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/six-takeaways-from-the-authors-guild-2018-authors-income-survey/)

Yet, the number of self-published authors is increasing.

According to Bowker News, self-published print (POD) books increased 38% in 2017:

"Self-publishing of print books increased by 38 percent in 2017 for a total of 879,587. This is the fifth consecutive year of print growth – driven by a 50 percent increase at CreateSpace, a self-publishing platform. Self-published ebooks decreased by 13 percent, continuing a downward trend for the third successive year. Two service providers, Smashwords and Lulu, accounted for 105,037 ebook titles, 81 percent of the ebook total of 129,601." (http://www.bowker.com/news/2019/New-Record-More-than-1-Million-Books-Self-Published-in-2017.html)
 

I had already published Recetas de una Mujer Maya Modern as an eBook on Smashwords. Now, I wanted a POD publisher.

So, I continued to search for a POD publisher. I went through the usual suspects like: BookBaby, Blurb, CreateSpace, D2D, EBM, Gumroad, Ingram, Kobo, Lulu, and others.

Many of these vendors had made significant changes to their processes and offerings since I last visited their sites. Some had stopped offering PODs; some were too costly for me; with some their POD software was too complicated or had been suspended; and some did not make PODs in other languages.

But, one, Blurb, made a suggestion after I complained about my difficulty with their template. They referred me to MagCloud. I had never heard of MagCloud.

When I visited MagCloud's site, at first, they appeared to be a photo book publisher as well as a business publication publisher. But, they offered the option of producing a "Digest" sized book that fit my needs. Also, they offered saddle-stitching. All this and there were no upfront costs.

All I had to pay for was the copies I bought plus shipping and handling. In addition, MagCloud offered worldwide distribution. Many POD publishers leave it up to you to handle sales and distribution. I went forward.

MagCloud offered templates for a variety of wordprocessing formats including Apple's Pages. After downloading their template, I formatted Recetas de una Mujer Maya Moderna for publication with MagCloud. The template was easy to use.

While I did have a bit of a learning curve translating pixels and points and margin dimensions based on their format, I got it done.

They had an interesting online "Preview" option. You look at the final layout in an electronic proof format.

Using MagCloud's template and website illustrate how self-published authors/publishers are faced with learning to use unfamiliar software or apps. For myself, no matter how much I learn, there is always a learning curve as I get acquainted with various software, apps and websites.

I bought two copies of Recetas de Una Mujer Maya Moderna. One for myself and one for a friend.

For one copy of Recetas de una Mujer Maya Moderna, including one digital copy, and shipping and handling to MX, the cost was $16.81 US. That's steep for a saddle-stitched, 56-page (including cover) booklet, in black and white, and a PDF. But, it is available as a booklet for the enthusiastic book lover outside of the U.S.

The other copy was sent to a friend in the states. The cost was $13.51 US for printing, standard shipping and handling. It took 8 days to reach her. She said it arrived nicely packaged, in good condition and well-made.

Now, I am preparing another booklet for MagCloud publication. I do this because people ask for a physical book of my works.

For the second book, I only encountered one snag. I got confused about MagCloud's character limit in the description text. Once that was fixed, the process continued smoothly.

In addition, MagCloud's email support has been prompt and so far, my concerns have been addressed.

I will talk about MagCloud's promotional options as well as internet visibility and sales, in another post.


Resources:

Authors Guild Author Income Survey 2018
https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/six-takeaways-from-the-authors-guild-2018-authors-income-survey/

MagCloud
http://www.magcloud.com/

MagCloud / Recetas de Una Mujer Maya Moderna
http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1581681

Bowker
http://www.bowker.com/

Bowker News
http://www.bowker.com/news/2019/New-Record-More-than-1-Million-Books-Self-Published-in-2017.html

Smashwords
https://www.smashwords.com/shelves/category/1

The Write Place
https://thewriteplace.biz/

Wikipedia - Topic - Self-Publishing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-publishing