A friend in the book marketing biz recently sent me a link to a blog post by R. W. Ridley, the “Self-Published American”. Link directly to the relevant post here.
Essentially, Mr. Ridley states that POD (Print on Demand) is akin to the methods of the independent filmmakers of Hollywood, whose rejection of convention means that they are able to put their material out there with less risk and greater profit potential. They may even get picked up by a major publishing house, as per “… It’s reducing their (the publisher’s) risk when acquiring new material. Print on demand has become their minor league program. They (traditional publishers) monitor the market for books that are selling well, and find material that has already built an audience and with more marketing dollars has the potential to build an even bigger audience.”
Let’s consider for a moment who is speaking: Mr. Ridley works for a major POD supplier. What I read in his posting here is something like, “OK Mr. Author – you do all the work plus make the major up-front investment, and once you’ve done that, you’ll be able to recoup part of your money when Huge Publisher Inc. pays you a royalty. ”
If you read my blog on a regular basis, you’ll know that what frustrates me about this post is not the idea of print-on-demand in general, but Ridley’s attitude specifically. POD has its’ place, but the way to make money in print-on-demand is not to use it to get a publisher to buy your work. If you’ve gotten to the point where you can produce a good quality manuscript worthy of printing at all, you’re probably better off to market the book yourself than to take money from a major house.
As I’ve said before, I think POD has its place, but it’s not what’s best for most publishers. If you make an analysis of what it costs to produce a book, you’ll know that there’s a lot of pieces that the pie must be cut up to serve. The printer takes a big slice, but when you’re doing POD for anything serious, you might as well give him the whole pie, and be happy with licking off the plate. I tell clients that printing should take up a maximum of 15% of the retail cost of your book. With POD, the slice is more like 50%, and that’s before you take into account the fact that most retailers (virtual or otherwise) will buy your book for 40% off the cover price. Hmmm, that must mean that you now have no budget for professional graphic design, marketing, publicity, sales, etc. Gee, is that why you’re trying to do without those things, and you’re having trouble with your plans to sell your book on your own? I can see why the temptation to sell out is very strong.
However, when a book is treated like a small business venture – which it is – including market research, planning, and quality design, isn’t it amazing how the profit potential for that project increases?
I do know of one author whose book magically sold a gazillion copies as soon as it was released. He’s been in print since forever. Yet, he does no marketing, or his marketing seems to happen at no cost to him. He doesn’t need to research his topic, and lousy graphic design and print quality doesn’t seem to affect his sales, which grow every year. And since we never see him in public, we can only assume he’s working on the next great release.
Actually – he is seen regularly doing his thing in Vegas. Isn’t “Jesus Christ Superstar” still running on a stage there?
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