Self-Publishing “Gotchas”

Thinking about self-publishing your book? Great!

But be careful. There are a number of “Gotchas” you should watch out for:

Paying for Services You Don’t Need – Many vanity publishers will sell you a package of services you probably don’t need – and may be performed by junior-level people who don’t know much about preparing a book for publication. It is ok to pay for an editor or a cover designer, if that is what you want, but it is important to interview these people individually and find someone with expertise in your field – someone with a proven track record. If a publisher is requiring you to pay for an editor, and they only allow you to use their staff, then it is probably a scam.

Make Sure You Get Books For Your Money – Too often “self-publishing” companies will sell you a package of services for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. You pay the money only to discover that you still don’t have any books. They cost extra. In fact it isn’t unusual at all for a self-published author to pay over a thousand dollars and only end up with ONE copy of his or her book. Make sure you know how many books you are going to get for your money before you type your credit card number into that website!

Distribution Promises – Many vanity publishers will promise book distribution. This is a sly deception. They cannot force a distribution company to accept your book or promote it to bookstores. All they can do is make it available. When they promise to put your book on Amazon or Barnes and Noble, they aren’t doing anything you couldn’t do yourself for much less money. Without promotion, distribution means very little. Which brings us to our next point…

Promotional Services – If someone promises to be able to make your book a best seller before he or she ever sees your book, then that person is trying to scam you. No self-respecting book promoter is going to even accept a book to promote until he or she has had a chance to read it and research its marketability.

One of the great things about using WWAOW to get your first book published is that you only pay for the book production. There are no other fees or requirements. You can get several copies of your book printed up, and then take them around to book editors, agents, and marketers. You can even take them to bookstores, and sell them on consignment if you like.

While you are doing this, your book is also available for sale on the WWAOW website. This means you don’t have to wait months or even years for someone else to get around to publishing your book, and you don’t have to pay extra for services you don’t need.

You can learn more about self publishing books at http://www.wwaow.com/.

From Blogger to Author

It is becoming a common theme in the publishing industry. Bloggers who have a strong following online publish a book and become an instant success.

The formula makes sense. After all, as a blogger, you already have the content; and you already have the name recognition. Even better, you have hundreds, or even thousands of potential buyers coming across your website every day.

For a successful blogger, self publishing can be a great option. This is because one of the primary reasons many authors work with large publishing companies is to leverage their marketing capabilities.

But as a blogger, you already have access to your market. Why not monetize the site traffic, and keep all the profit?

There are plenty of examples of bloggers publishing books, and making huge money. Here are a few:

Marshall Brain began by writing informative articles on his website www.howstuffworks.com. The content from the website was later published into a book, and today the business generates over $20 million per year.

Christian Lander created a blog called StuffWhitePeopleLike.com. The site stats show over 33 million hits - which got Christian a $350,000 book deal from Random House this year. This kind of deal is something that anyone would like, no matter what color your skin happens to be.

And in 2003, Robert Lanham published "The Hipster's Handbook" and sold over 40,000 copies.

The trick, of course, is to get a huge following online. You'll need the traffic to sell the book. You also need to come up with a compelling reason for people to buy the book. After all, they are already reading your blog for free - why should they buy a paper book? Answer that question, and you could make millions.

You can learn more about self publishing books at http://www.wwaow.com/.

Famous Authors Who Have Self Published

If you listen to the conventional wisdom, you would believe that no real author self publishes; that all self published books are doomed to obscurity. Following is a list of authors who did it anyway.

For some of these people, when their books were turned away from the established publishing houses, they persevered. For others, the "experts" told them they had to modify their books, or drop their prices, or that it couldn't be marketed the way they wanted.

It's a good thing these Self published authors didn't listen to the conventional wisdom:

Scott Adams - Creator of Dilbert
Arthur Agatston - The South Beach Diet
Julie Clark - The Baby Einstein Company
John Audubon - The Birds of America
John Bartlett - Familiar Quotations
L. Frank Baum - Author of the Wizard of Oz
Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson - Co-authors of The One-Minute Manager
Marshall Brain - How Stuff Works
Amanda Brown - Legally Blonde
Edgar Rice Burroughs - Creator of Tarzan
E.E. Cummings - No Thanks
William E.B. DuBois - Founder of the NAACP
Alexandre Dumas - Author of The Three Musketeers
Arlene Eisenberg - What to Do When You're Expecting
T.S. Eliot - Nobel Prize Winning Poet
Howard Fast - Spartacus
Edward Fitzgerald - The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam
Benjamin Franklin - Poor Richard's Almanack, One of the Founders of the United States
Galileo Galilei - The Starry Messenger
Zane Grey - Author of over 60 Western Novels
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Author of The House of the Seven Gables and The Scarlet Letter
Hugh Hefner - Self-published the first edition of Playboy
Ernest Hemmingway - Paid for his first novel to be printed
L. Ron Hubbard - Self-published Dianetics
James Joyce - Self-published Ulysses
Stephen King - Self published "The Plant" on his website in 2000
Robert Kiyosaki - Rich Dad, Poor Dad
Louis L'Amour - Smoke from This Alter
Herman Melville - Author of Moby Dick self-published several books of poetry
Richard Nixon - President of the United States, Self-published Real Peace
Thomas Paine - Self-published "Common Sense" to recruit soldiers for the American Revolution
Edgar Allen Poe - Author of "The Raven", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Fall of the House of Usher"
Beatrix Potter - The Tale of Peter Rabbit
Irma Rombauer - The Joy of Cooking
Henry David Thoreau - Self-published Walden
Mark Twain - Self-published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
Noah Webster - Author of the First American Dictionary
Walt Whitman - Self-published "Leaves of Grass"
Virginia Woolf - Author of Mrs. Dalloway, To The Lighthouse, and Orlando
Tim and Nina Zagat - Self-published the Zagat Survey

And there are countless others. Many of the people on this list self published to jump-start their careers, then ended up with lucrative deals with major publishers.

You can learn more about self publishing books at http://www.wwaow.com/.