This post was originally published at Novelicious.com and is now at WritingTipsOasis.com. WritingTipsOasis.com acquired Novelicious.com in June 2022.
Last year, 18 million self-published titles were bought by readers, to a value of £300 million. In 2014, self-publishing has continued to boom with the DIY approach to books gaining more writers and readers than ever before. We know that many of you are amongst the writers who have or are hoping to self-publish so, at your request, we’ve invited Bibliocrunch CEO Miral Sattar to share her expertise in this brand new and very educational self-publishing series.
Have a subject you’re especially keen to see Miral cover? Leave your suggestions in the comments!
by Miral Sattar
In the last post we talked about picking your retailers. Once you’ve decided where you are going to sell your book, you might want to consider which formats you are going to sell the book.
If you’re doing a print book, you’ve probably heard the buzzwords ‘print on demand’. With digital technology you no longer have to pay upfront for printing costs because now there are so many print-on-demand options. The book gets printed when someone buys it and the costs of the book printing gets taken out of the sale price.
For example, an author puts their print on demand book for sale on Amazon. When someone purchases the book, the book gets printed and bounded in no time at all. It’s cost effective and then gets sent to the person who purchased. The retailer or print on demand service takes a royalty from the price of your book.
With all the options for print on demand you can get your print book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell’s and other retailers.
Below we list out some print on demand vendors:
CreateSpaceCreateSpace is an Amazon company that has no upfront costs to upload your book. CreateSpace sets wholesale discounts at 20% for the CreateSpace store, 40% for Amazon, and 60% for expanded distribution. There is an expanded distribution feature for $25.
Ingram Spark
We previously referred authors to Lightning Source, but since the launch of Ingram Spark (just for self-published authors), it looks like going with them is a much better option for authors. Ingram Spark authors have wholesale discount choices when setting up their titles for POD distribution – 55% and 40%. They do have setup fees.
Blurb
Originally started as a site to create photography books, Blurb has expanded to cookbooks, travel books, children’s books, graphic novels, and, most recently, regular print books. Blurb authors have created more than two million books since the company started, with a new book created every minute. Blurb gives an array of choices from basic to more in-depth designs, and its choices for creation are endless.
BookBaby
BookBaby just launched a new service that allows authors to get their print books into Barnes and Noble, Powells, Amazon, Baker and Taylor and 150 other outlets.
File formats
Nowadays a lot of the retailers and vendors accept formatted Word documents or a “Print Ready PDF.”
Gone are the days where you have to pre-order a set number of copies and worry about how you are going to sell all that inventory. You don’t want to have to spend money on a print run if you don’t already have a distribution deal in place.
Without a deal, you may just end up with a few hundred books sitting in your garage.
ABOUT MIRAL SATTAR:
Miral Sattar is CEO of Bibliocrunch, a platform that matches writers with trusted, vetted book publishing professionals. Miral loves books and loves helping authors fulfill their publishing dream. Her company Bibliocrunch has helped numerous authors hit the Amazon best-seller list.