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Print On Demand - Is It Right for Your Book?

Many say the stigma of self-publishing is still there when your book is at a print-on-demand (POD) shop. I've tried it, and it's just not true. POD publishing is new enough that if you can keep your attitude proud and confident, you can carry it off.

For the writer, the main differences between POD and being published by a mainstream company are that:

1. While you don't pay to get published using a POD company, you still don't get an advance. A mainstream publisher will pay you an advance.

2. With a POD situation, you will keep more royalties than you would with a mainstream publisher.

3. They say that a mainstream publisher will promote your book more. But unless you're "hot," or a proven best-selling author, they don't put a lot of time or money into promoting your book. So while going with a POD publisher means you've got to do all the book marketing yourself, that's not all that different from most people's experiences with regular publishing houses.

4. With POD publishing, you have total artistic control of your book, the cover, the font, the size of the book, everything.

I've used Lulu (www.Lulu.com) to publish my book Vocal Vibrance: The Complete Technique for Singing and Speaking (by Suzann Kale). And it's now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and has had a few reviews published. And I've used CreateSpace (www.createspace.com) to publish my novel Midnight Tequila. (Of the two, I must say my personal opinion is that I adore Createspace.)

Yes, a lot of its success will rest on my shoulders, rather than a traditional publishing company's marketing department. But you know what? A while back I had a book published by Collier/Macmillan (The Complete New York Guide for Singles by Susan Cartoun), with an advance and a book launch party at the then Studio 54, and still - most of the success depended on my booking my own promotions.

print on demand publishing Many traditionally published authors complain that their books are not given enough push by the marketing and sales departments. In fact, most of the marketing dollars are spent on already established authors. The rest of us, whether we're published by The Man, or whether we take the POD route, have to hustle.

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The second difference is that with traditional publishing, you get a fairly skimpy royalty. My royalty on my New York book was 6% if I remember right. That's ... not a whole lot. With POD publishing, you keep a lot more - on my Lulu book I'm getting about 50%. Quite the difference.

How Much Does POD Publishing Cost?

I'm here to say that if you play your cards right at CreateSpace or Lulu, you can spend next to nothing. And that means CreateSpace and Lulu are NOT a vanity presses. You can do everything for free, and not pay a cent until someone orders your book - and then the customer's paying, so you've still not spent anything. (I ended up spending a little, because I chose some options that they charged for. But I know others who have spent $9.00 on a preview/review copy, and that was it!)

There are other POD publishers with good reputations. Many of them will charge an upfront fee, but there's usually a choice of what kind of "package" you want to buy from them. You can get your book published at i Universe (www.iuniverse.com) for $600, at X Libris (http://www2.xlibris.com/index.html) for $300 if it's all black and white, and at BookSurge (www.booksurge.com) for $300 (black and white or color) - and these prices include various must-have's, like an ISBN number, and some marketing choices. These are all reputable companies. Whether your book sells or not depends on you.

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