Just wanted to share my experience with publishing three books, and hope I can save others from some of my pitfalls.
#1 traditional publisher. long haul but fairly good results, now out-of-print.
#2 a self-publishing service--POD, print-on-demand
#3 myself as publisher. [there is a big difference]
On #2
I went with Xulon. [after giving up on type 1 after three months of waiting on ms, which now in most cases don't take ms's unless you have an agent]
Sounded great, catalogue, Christian Bookseller's convention, Amazon links etc.
REASON that I went POD--a)did not want boxes of books b)sounded like great promotion
#2 Results: a}You still have to buy boxes of books {IF you want a reasonable price} b) You still have to sell the book and do all the promotion yourself. [they will try to keep selling you 'promotional' stuff like further listing in special/seasonal catalogues etc.] Their 'promotion' is pretty much fruitless because they publish so many books--claim to be the largest publisher of Christian books.
Your book is just lost in the herd unless YOU can promote it well.
#3 Author as the Publisher
This route you can go two directions POD or standard printer.
Note: a couple hundred books sold by the avg. self publisher is good.
POD you can go direct to e.g. Lightning Source, etc, you can buy as needed; book cost is much higher than a printer. But for
300 dollars you can get the job done. Then you have to buy books and promote
Printer: Here you KNOW that you will have boxes of books. but much lower cost per book. And, as with all the rest, you still have to do the promotion and sell the books.
#3 If you want them, you can get the amazon, distributer, etc link ups for a bit over 100 dollars [but with Xulon, I had them as part of their package but they really did me no good.]
Search local and compare with what you can find on the web.
#1 traditional publisher. long haul but fairly good results, now out-of-print.
#2 a self-publishing service--POD, print-on-demand
#3 myself as publisher. [there is a big difference]
On #2
I went with Xulon. [after giving up on type 1 after three months of waiting on ms, which now in most cases don't take ms's unless you have an agent]
Sounded great, catalogue, Christian Bookseller's convention, Amazon links etc.
REASON that I went POD--a)did not want boxes of books b)sounded like great promotion
#2 Results: a}You still have to buy boxes of books {IF you want a reasonable price} b) You still have to sell the book and do all the promotion yourself. [they will try to keep selling you 'promotional' stuff like further listing in special/seasonal catalogues etc.] Their 'promotion' is pretty much fruitless because they publish so many books--claim to be the largest publisher of Christian books.
Your book is just lost in the herd unless YOU can promote it well.
#3 Author as the Publisher
This route you can go two directions POD or standard printer.
Note: a couple hundred books sold by the avg. self publisher is good.
POD you can go direct to e.g. Lightning Source, etc, you can buy as needed; book cost is much higher than a printer. But for
300 dollars you can get the job done. Then you have to buy books and promote
Printer: Here you KNOW that you will have boxes of books. but much lower cost per book. And, as with all the rest, you still have to do the promotion and sell the books.
#3 If you want them, you can get the amazon, distributer, etc link ups for a bit over 100 dollars [but with Xulon, I had them as part of their package but they really did me no good.]
Search local and compare with what you can find on the web.
