Thinking about self-publishing?

Via the New York Times: Self-Publishers Flourish as Writers Pay the Tab. Excerpt:

Booksellers, hobbled by the economic crisis, are struggling to lure readers. Almost all of the New York publishing houses are laying off editors and pinching pennies. Small bookstores are closing. Big chains are laying people off or exploring bankruptcy. 

A recently released study by the National Endowment for the Arts found that while more people are reading literary fiction, fewer of them are reading books. 

Meanwhile, there is one segment of the industry that is actually flourishing: capitalizing on the dream of would-be authors to see their work between covers, companies that charge writers and photographers to publish are growing rapidly at a time when many mainstream publishers are losing ground. 

Credit for the self-publishing boomlet goes to authors like Jim Bendat, whose book “Democracy’s Big Day,” a collection of historical vignettes about presidential inaugurations, enjoyed a modest burst in sales in the hoopla surrounding President Obama’s swearing-in. 

After failing to secure a traditional publishing deal in 2000, Mr. Bendat, a public defender in Los Angeles, paid $99 to publish the first edition of his book with iUniverse, a print-on-demand company. 

He updated the book in 2004 and 2008, and has sold more than 2,500 copies. IUniverse takes a large cut of each sale of the book, currently on Amazon.com for $11.66. 

As traditional publishers look to prune their booklists and rely increasingly on blockbuster best sellers, self-publishing companies are ramping up their title counts and making money on books that sell as few as five copies, in part because the author, rather than the publisher, pays for things like cover design and printing costs.

We're a long way from the days of the old vanity presses, and self-publishing looks like a more reasonable way to go, especially when even the top editor of Publishers Weekly has just been laid off.

Comments

[Graham]

Besides, anyone with any sense would use a publisher like Lulu, who don't charge for publication.

[Julie Ferguson]

i'm with you 100%

[Sean McManus]

In some ways, publishers need to focus on fewer titles and put some serious promotional budget into each one. Otherwise, what do they do to justify the massive cut of sales that they take? They've lost their monopoly on design, publishing, manufacturing and distribution. Authors can self-publish and do all that themselves now. The promotion is what makes the difference now, and many conventionally published books (perhaps most of them) don't get a significant promotional budget anyway. I've found it hard work promoting my Lulu novel about the music industry 'University of Death', but I don't believe it would have been any easier working with a conventional publisher - it would just have meant sharing the money.

[Leah Z]

Brent Sampson from Outskirts Press wrote something in response to the NY Times article, and you can read it here: http://tinyurl.com/anz737

Leah