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Adventures in Self-Publishing, Part 5

by Marc Zeedar macopinion@designwrite.com

One of the most complicated decisions about self-publishing is whether or not to sell your book via bookstores (online or otherwise). On the surface this seems like a no-brainer: why wouldn't you want to sell your book via as many avenues as possible? But the reality is that doing that might not be as helpful as it sounds, and there are negatives.

To sell your book in bookstores (online or otherwise), you simply need to get a ISBN (International Standard Book Number). This is a unique number that identifies the publisher and the specific book. Even different editions of the same book require different numbers. Most of us are familiar with ISBNs as the barcode on the backs of modern books and it's easy to see the value of a unique identifier for computerized inventory purposes. If you have an ISBN, your book can be listed in Books in Print and any bookstore in the world can special order it direct from the publisher (which could be you, a printing company like Lulu, or a traditional publishing company).

So how do you go about getting an ISBN? Well, the numbers are issued to publishers in blocks of 10, 100, and 1000, so if you want to be your own publisher, you have to buy a bunch of numbers at a time. Thus it can get expensive if you just want one number for one book. (If you are planning to publish multiple titles, it's not such a bad deal.)

A new trend is for print-on-demand publishers like Lulu to issue their own ISBNs. This makes them the publisher, not you, but that's really just semantics and not relevant and makes little difference in real world use. Lulu's publishing plans that include an ISBN start as little as $99, which is an excellent deal. A chief competitor to Lulu is BookSurge, a subsidiary of Amazon, and they charge a hefty $299. (You can actually buy your own block of 10 ISBNs for less!)

However, a friend of mine with self-publishing experience told me that he's used both services and does not recommend the Lulu approach if you intend to sell your books via Amazon. The reason is three-fold.

First, books published via Lulu do not show up as "in stock" on Amazon's site. Instead they are listed as available in the "used" section where it shows Lulu as the seller. This is not the end of the world, but does make your book look less attractive to buyers and I'm sure you'd lose sales by people who wouldn't think to check the "used" section for a brand new book. Books sold via Amazon's BookSurge service do not have this limitation: they show up as in stock with an availability of several days.

Second, books published via Lulu use a completely different printing process than regular Lulu books. The specifications of these books are different, which is confusing, and my friend was especially dissatisfied with the quality of interior photos which did not print as well. For him this was significant as his books had many images; that may or may not be a problem for you.

Finally, books you publish via BookSurge have a key advantage over Lulu books: Amazon offers a paid service where you can bundle your book with another book. You've seen those offers on Amazon where it says "Buy this book with this other book for $X?" That's what I'm talking about. It's an effective advertising gimmick: my friend says sales and interest in your book increase markedly when you bundle your book with a much more popular book. It's a great attention-getter and worth the price. You apparently cannot offer this with Lulu books as they are never in stock.

Therefore, my conclusion is, if you want to sell your books via Amazon, you should publish your book via BookSurge. Caveat: I have not used BookSurge so I cannot verify anything about them, but I have spoken with them and they seem to be a professional outfit. However, they are more expensive ($299 minimum), and they really push their "publishing packages" which sell for thousands of dollars. (I saw one package that was a whopping $12,000!)

I'm not convinced these packages are a great value, but that mostly depends on your needs. The packages can include things like "professional" cover design, book layout, business cards and postcards to promote your book, editing, professionally-written press releases, author copies of your book, promotional options, and more. If you're like me and prefer to do most of the work yourself, the packages offer little value and are overpriced. However, if you're busy and not a designer and have got the money, a package could be a nice convenience. Just be careful about not buying more than you really need. The packages sound great on paper, but may not help you sell that many books.

Speaking of selling, that's the biggest problem with going the ISBN route. Profit margin. As in so low it's almost gone.

Traditional publishing works like this: publishers sell their books to bookstores (like Amazon and your local brick-and-mortar store) for 50% of the retail price of the book. (Don't even try to negotiate on this. It won't work.)

This means that for a $20 book at the store, you sell it wholesale for just $10. Out of that $10 comes the cost of printing the book, shipping it to the store (if appropriate), and the profit for the print-on-demand service (i.e. Lulu or Booksurge). What's left is yours, and that, unfortunately, is pitifully small. Out of that $10 you might net $3, if you're lucky. Booksurge gives you a flat 35%, so that's $3.50.

That's for a book that the customer buys for $20! If you're only making a few bucks on each book, you have to sell a lot of books to make any money. By selling the book yourself and keeping all the money, you might make $14 off each book -- so selling 300 books yourself would be significantly more profitable than Amazon selling 1,000 of your books!

And don't forget: to sell your books via Amazon costs money (for the ISBN and for any advertising promos such as the book bundle thing, which costs $1,000 a month). It probably works out closer to a 200:1000 ratio of self-sell to Amazon-sell for the same profit.

Of course the cool thing about Amazon is that since it's such a popular store you could conceivable sell many thousands of copies of your book. You could definitely sell far more than you could on your own site. But the question is: will you?

I seriously doubt it. Just having your book on Amazon is no guarantee of sales. My publisher friend told me that the book bundle promo is pretty much the only way to get an unknown book sold on Amazon: unless people are searching for your specific book or a book on your unique topic, your book is just one of millions and won't be discovered. And if people are already searching for your specific book or your topic is so unique, they can find your website via Google with the same info and you might as well sell to them direct!

My feeling is that to sell any book requires dedication and marketing; Amazon is no magic bullet. If you're going to do all that work anyway, why not direct the sales to your own website where you can make a higher profit?

At this time, I have yet to obtain an ISBN for my book. I'm still researching the various approaches and trying to decide how much I'd like to invest. One factor in my decision is that I do plan to produce other books, so I may just purchase my own block of ISBNs and become an independent publisher. There's more work involved with that approach, but in the long-term it is much less cost (about $30/title).

I am interested in having my book on Amazon, but only if I think it will sell enough copies to justify the lower profit margin. That means for me to do it I'd need to promote it, probably via the book pair promo feature, which costs significant money, so I'll have to weigh the risk and decide.

The nice thing is that I'm not locked in to any solution right now: I can continue as I have been or choose to use BookSurge or another approach any time I like. We'll see what happens.

Well, I hope you've enjoyed this series on self-publishing. My next task is to learn more about how to market my book. I'm not a great marketer, so that's an uphill battle for me, but I am motivated, so we'll see how it goes. I may write more on this topic in the future, depending on what I learn.

(Don't forget my special discount: you can save $2 on my book via promo code macopinion.)

macopinion@designwrite.com