Have you often seen adverts with the wording ‘Authors Wanted’ or something similar? These may cause you to muse on the, often proclaimed, difficulty of budding authors wanting to be published - ‘Manuscripts Wanted’, scream the ads. ‘Everyone has one book in them’ - go ahead and write it and then try to find a recognised publisher. Sadly, the substantial odds are that you will be disappointed; you need an enormous amount of talent - and luck - to break into this market. The obvious thing to do, then, is to turn to these ‘author hungry’ establishments. Contact them and you will find that they are not what they seem. They will, indeed, publish your book - at a price - a price that you pay. The spectrum of this market is that, at one end, with a good company playing things very fair, you will receive advice and the employment of professional skills to produce an, appearance-wise, sellable book. There will then follow some degree of help with marketing. It is this factor which is the potential disaster area. Professional publishing houses have their armies of representatives pressuring booksellers. Alongside these, the loner stands little chance. Also, there is a need to be brutally frank at this stage - you will be trying to sell a book that was not thought to be commercially viable. This is quite a barrier for even the best marketing organisation to overcome.
That was the brighter end of the spectrum. Hand your money over to a company at the darker end and you might not see any books at all for your outlay. If you do, then they will be of poor quality and perhaps only provided in dribs and drabs to, so say, match your sales progress. You will hear this, ‘Print my book at all costs’ referred to as vanity publishing. It really is the book world equivalent of pouring money down the drain. But my point is not to highlight these realities of subsidy publishing but to argue that it is misleading to call it DIY. In the home improvement scene, DIY involves gathering ideas, plans etc, purchasing tools and materials and then getting stuck into the job yourself. I did this, in the end, with the Britannia history. As endeared as I and my ex-compatriots are to this aircraft, it was not in the Spitfire league and, with the typescript written and photographs gathered, I was unable to interest a publisher - and I tried something like 40! But I was sure that there was some sort of market - I personally knew 600 people sufficiently interested in the aircraft to belong to an association that revelled in reminiscences. Then there is a huge number of aviation enthusiasts and, as this was to be the only book on this particular aircraft, it only needed a very small percentage interest for more sales.
Convinced of all this I started investigating subsidy publishers. For 1,000 copies of a 250 page, A4 softback format book I received quotes varying between £9,000 and £12,000. My calculations told me that, at its best, this would make it a profitless labour of love - at the worst, a financial disaster.
My enthusiasm was waning when one of the subsidy publishers invited me, as we lived fairly close together, to visit him to discuss the project. It will turn out that he did not do himself a favour. He showed me his computer set-up and the software he used. Having been a computer user for many years, I had a machine as good as, if not better than, his. I needed a scanner and a removable hard disk to totally match his equipment. I also needed to purchase the professional piece of software - QuarkXpress.
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With all this sitting on my desk it was time to take the plunge - my learning
curve had to be quite steep. I am sure that my use of the software would
give the professionals the shudders - but ‘there are more ways ...’ I
am also sure that I had a lot of good luck on my side. Not unnaturally,
I used samples of professionally produced books as examples. It was clear
I needed an ISBN but, having obtained the appropriate address from the
‘Writers and Artists Yearbook’, this proved remarkably straightforward.
The layout of the title page normally has the publishing house’s imprint.
I decided to create ‘Keyham Books’ (Keyham is the name of my house) to
give the book and marketing a professional air. I determined that one
can quite legally just create such a ‘company’, the only proviso being
that one’s own name must appear on business stationery. After many months
of effort - and it is amazing how long the closing stages take - indexing,
in particular, comes to mind - I had the complete book on my internal
hard disk; I had not indulged in a removable one at this stage.
Now was the time to emerge from the amateurism of my study into the professional
world of the printers. I consulted the Yellow Pages for the ones that
proclaimed that they worked directly from hard disk on to their printing
machines. I was pleasantly surprised that my clearly novice status did
not discourage replies. One large firm was particularly helpful and offered
to send a representative to discuss my requirements. It turned out that
their direct use of hard disk was not that advanced. This was fortunate
as my efforts were not sufficiently sophisticated to employ this method
anyway. It was suggested that my material should be put to the test by
their studio which produces the negatives for the printing plates. This
required a removable hard disk and it was agreed that I would be loaned
one! How helpful can you get! I was shown around the printing works to
give me a better appreciation of the processes involved.
That level of assistance continued; my scanning of the photographs was
too dark - some darkening occurs during the printing process so this has
to be taken into account at the scanning stage. I redid the photographs.
I found it difficult to produce the cover as one item ie front, spine
and back; the separate components I provided were assembled into one.
Bromide proofs of the pages arrived, followed by a full colour one of
the cover. Thrilling moments. A more sombre one was handing over money
- 50% was required with the order, the balance prior to delivery. I was
pretty confident that I could sell 500 copies - my order for 1,000 was
being speculative. The cost of printing - £4,000. A sobering moment was
when the pile stood in my garage.
Marketing was now the big challenge. Fortunately I received good commercial
advice on an RRP - I have learnt a lot in the process on a reasonable
price to charge bookshops - talk of them wanting 40% discount might apply
to bulk orders - much less appears acceptable when supplying single copies
to meet individual customer orders. My shop window was aviation magazine
reviewers. I bombarded every possibility with a review copy. I interested
local radios in being interviewed; from my correspondence files I concocted
a mail shot list. I made the book available by mail order and I managed,
with a touch of good fortune, to get it on the booksellers’ CD-ROM catalogue.
The result? All 1,000 copies sold in just over a year! Profit? Immense
satisfaction and a ‘wave of the hand figure’ of some thousands of pounds
- this does not bear close inspection which would reveal many ‘incidentals’!
With this success, I decided to try another niche in the book market.
I now had considerable experience of operating an American motorhome in
this country and there are some ‘ins and outs’ to this. ‘RV
in UK’, a guide to the British operation of an American motorhome,
was the result. This, again, was a DIY production. As I write, it is selling
well enough.
Is there a lesson to be learnt? If there is, then I must be a slow learner!
DIY book No.4 was published in 2001 ... 'The
Recreational Nomad'.
The Britannia book, 'The Whispering Giant in Uniform', went out of print
but I produced a CD-ROM version. This has now been superceded by a
new RAF Britannia history. I have also made a CD-ROM
version of the log I kept during a six-month motorhome tour of
the USA and one on a tour of Ireland.
2005 Up-date: The major change in my operating is that I now use a 'Print on Demand' company - Antony (sic) Rowe Ltd. The cost per copy is higher but you don't have that huge initial outlay - and if they don't sell ...
Self-publishing has made major strides in the last few years. This is amply demonstrated at Lulu.com!
