How to Publish Your Book

Ever heard of "Eragon"? Now a major movie, this children's tale of fantasy was originally a self-published novel. How did it make it's mark?

Well, in the publishing world, connections are everything. You can write the best novel ever, but, unless you know somebody, the odds are your submissions are doomed to meet an early and eternal rest in the circular file.

Getting your first work published is about more than just being good, or even great. It is more than writing that perfect query letter that will make an agent's eyes pop. To get that far, somebody actually has to read what you've written. Sadly, as flooded as most agents and publishers are these days, unless you get lucky - and I mean Lottery lucky - that's never going to happen.

Sure, you can go to conferences and meet with agents face-to-face. You can chase the editors from the top houses around town like a stalker fishing for a restraining order. You can even send them a freshly-revised query every few weeks, just to remind them that you're alive (and persistent). But, unless you're already independently wealthy, the odds are that you can't do any of the those things. And you're more likely to get that restraining order than a publishing contract.

Instead, why not cut out the middle man?

Eragon took off because of a stroke of luck. Obviously, it's good - it's sold almost as many copies as Harry Potter, after all. It is something people want to read. But it never would have gotten anywhere if not for the modern miracle of self-publishing.

Eragon began it's public career as a self-published novel. Technically, the author's parents published it, but that's neither here nor there. From there, a copy fell into the hands of a child of a Random House editor. She loved it, showed daddy, and he loved it.

I don't even want to speculate how many times that very same manuscript got rejected. The point is that by self-publishing, Eragon got 'out there', and doors started to open.

Now, a book still has to be good - very good - to get anybody's attention. Slacking off and printing up your first draft probably won't get you very far at all. But, if you've got winning material, and are just stuck in the doldrums of obscurity, then there is hope for you yet.

Now, there are dozens of ways a person can self-publish. Most of them are quite pricey, and a goodly portion exist only for the vain (and rich) to make use of in an effort to sate their own teetering egos. However, there are a few that are absolutely free.

One of my personal favorites is Lulu.com. This is the site where I myself got started with "Rage of Night". I was sick of the constant "looks good, but we don't want it" responses I was getting from agents (when I was getting responses at all), so I went ahead and put the book out there.

Shortly thereafter, I started getting letters of interest. Weird how that works, isn't it? (Unfortunately, every one of them is still "thinking it over", nearly a year later)

Now, the problem with publishing on Lulu is, even though it is free, it has a very limited market - unless you want to pay huge marketing fees to get the book into places like Amazon.com or Barnes and Noble. Even then, no guarantees.

I sold a few hundred copies, then things started to slow down. The biggest hangup: the lowest price I could set for "Rage" was better than $3 more expensive than standard bookstore books of that size and type.

Why would anybody buy my book, no matter how good, when they could go to a Walden's and pick up something by Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, or Terry Goodkind, for $3 less (plus shipping)? Given that, I count a few hundred copies as a major success.

A few months later, Amazon itself jumped into the ring. Now, Amazon has had a self-publishing branch for a while now, called Booksurge. The problem is that it, like most other vanity presses, was mostly for vanity. It was expensive. Frankly, if I'm writing to make a living, it kind of goes against my gut to drop a few thousand dollars just to get the ink on the paper.

I realize that's exactly what real publishing houses do - but that's what they're for. If not for that expense, everybody would publish themselves.

But the people at Amazon are very smart. They did start Amazon.com, after all. So, they learned from sites like Lulu, and began moving in a new direction. They added "Print on Demand" to their lineup.

PoD is different from every other kind of publishing, and is perfect for the online world of order-and-wait that comes along with every purchase. Things have to be shipped, after all, and that takes time. So, PoD utilizes that advantage, and simply prints up a copy for a customer after it is sold. Minimal expense, zero risk.

So, Amazon launched CreateSpace, a PoD service that allows users to self-publish, like Booksurge, but do so for free. Better - these books become available for sale on Amazon.com itself automatically, and can be special ordered through most major physical bookstores nation-wide.

In essence, Amazon raised the stakes in the PoD game. And it was a good play. It got my attention.

The problem with CreateSpace, though, was that the finished product ended up a bit more pricey than the alternatives. Granted, it would be stupid for someone who is self-publishing to not get a book put up on Amazon.com for free, but, again, we have that problem of the retail price being just too bloody high.

In fact, the same book published on both Lulu and CreateSpace runs more than 20% less on Lulu. Now, if we're having trouble with affordable pricing on Lulu, who the heck is going to buy a CreateSpace book?

Well, Amazon came up with an answer to that too: they rolled out a 'Pro' program for CreateSpace, which, for a $50 fee, gives authors the ability to drop their prices tremendously. My science book, "Testing the Big Bang", which is more expensive because of the full-color illustrations and diagrams, dropped from $18 something to $10.99 overnight.

I was able to change the price of "Rage of Night" to $7.99 - dead even with the competition. As an added bonus, I make three times the royalty for each sale on Amazon now as I do for the more expensive version on Lulu.

Now, with absolutely no advertising besides my little plugs in articles like this one (and a couple of glowing reviews from non-critics who read a lot), I've sold over 4,000 copies of "Rage of Night" across the whole of the Net in just the last 6 months. Not New York Times Best-Seller List quantities, but, considering the exceedingly limited exposure the book has, pretty bloody good, I think. It's got to be one of the best-selling self-published books of all time (yet, still no solid commitments from those pesky agents).

As I've said, I'm against sinking money in to getting my book out. Money is supposed to flow TO the author, not the other way. But, considering the magic that can be wrought for that measly $50 fee... I'd be a moron to reject that just because of an absolutist principle.

So, to sum up, using CreateSpace might not get your book the same success "Eragon" enjoyed, but it can get it out there; and 'out there' is where the magic happens. Of course, I strongly recommend you try to get your work published through the traditional channels first - you might just get lucky. But, if that fails, you've got something to fall back on to help shoe-horn your dreams into reality.

And the best part: if you should happen to strike the jackpot and land a "real" publisher at some future date, you can simply turn your PoD off.

You can learn more about Amazon's CreateSpace at www.CreateSpace.com

Good writing!

PS - If you happen to be, or know, an agent who handles "breathtaking" epic fantasy, please feel free to contact me.