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Home Page > Writing > Publishing > The Art of Self-Publishing: pitfalls and promises of taking your own book to print

The Art of Self-Publishing: pitfalls and promises of taking your own book to print

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Posted: Nov 26, 2010 |Comments: 0
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In August 2009, the result of years of work came out in English, in South Africa, as Spots of a Leopard – on being a man. What I had started in 2001, saw a climax in April 2007 with the publication of the Dutch edition for the Netherlands and Belgium. ‘Vlekken van een luipaard’ was nominated one year later for awards in both Belgium and the Netherlands.

These nominations strengthened my resolve to make sure this book would also find an audience in the English-speaking world; and especially in Africa. So: in August 2009 there it was: my self published copy of “Spots”. I had done something the established publishers hadn’t dared.

I’ve learned the hard way that, when dealing with established publishers, a few things really don’t work when you want to take your matter to print.
1) They need months to read a few pages. While a manuscript collects dust on their desk, there is not a lot one can do but wait. And waiting for other people’s decisions is not really my strongest character asset, I noticed.
2) They judge a book according to criteria mostly set up by their accountants and financial managers; these are usually individuals who know a lot about mathematics and statistics, but have zilch feeling for creativity, social relevancy or contemporary needs of a society. For them a niche is something to be desperately avoided.

However, publishers have networks which no individual author has. They have deals with the big book chains, so their books end up on tables near the front door. At a fee, of course. They also have channels to distribute, nationally and internationally. And they have their own favorite reviewers at newspapers, TV-stations and radio.

Self-publishing
After yet another ‘No, we won’t bring Spots to the market’, I decided in March 2009 to then do it myself. The translation was halfway done, I had found an editor to weed out the mistakes and a designer to do the layout. Of course, although they were and are friends, all of that at a fee.

Most difficult was it to find a distributor. The big ones can’t waste their time on a small publisher – they won’t even reply to emails. And most small distributors with a vague interest in scanning the market for stuff not picked up by the big players however, do also not have the time to engage with unknown names.
This problem of communication will remain, even after signing a contract. I’m at my second distributor now and am considering taking away all my books out of their stock since they simply can’t be bothered to pick up the phone. Let alone to make payments when payments are due.

Without those distributors no chain will even consider stocking a book from a small publisher. There are simply too many people out there who, like me, think they wrote something worthwhile, who are eager to follow up on the well-being of their work.

Finally, a mere two weeks before I was about to go to print did I find a distributor willing to take me and my book on. This crucial step meant ‘Spots’ would find a way to bookshelves.

Going to print
The moment I’d found a distributor I dared taking it all a few steps further. I now needed to generate as much publicity as possible. And it worked. Previews would appear in major publications and magazines; I organised radio interviews and launches. And the feedback so far was positive.

Knowing about this upcoming exposure, I decided to up the print run from 1,000 to 2,000. Raising the print run meant the per copy prize would go down. Which was good for either my pocket, or for the retail prize.
I invested about € 7,500 ($ 10,000) in making sure ‘Spots’ would see the light of day. Most of this was for the printers, another batch for the designer and a third batch for the editor. A magic amount of money, enough to buy a decent second hand car. Or to survive on for a year…

The first results were encouraging.
And now, in late 2010, more than a year after the launch?

I have sold about 1200 copies. Most of those I sold myself at presentations, debates and seminars. There are about 800 copies left. I will not be sold out any time soon. My profit per copy sold to bookshops is about € 2,00 ($ 2.50), with most of the revenues going to the bookshops.

Now my book is for sale via Amazon as both a print-on-demand as well as a Kindle-edition. Through another provider it’s even available at Barnes & Nobles in the US and globally for the Sony e-reader too.

Hindsight
When I take stock of all of this, looking back I see where and when I took decisions that I should have taken differently. Most important of those is: I should have printed less copies. Less copies would have increased the price-per-copy for me, and therefore would have limited my profit-per-book, but it would also have meant less of an overall financial risk. I should have gone for a first print run of maybe 700 copies, and then move to print-on-demand. That way I’d have limited my financial risk dramatically.
Another crucial point: I overestimated the possibilities for international sales. ‘Going abroad’ is a whole different ball game altogether.

Learning curve
All in all the experience of self-publishing has been a great learning-curve.
* Trying to enter a market that is as small as it is in South Africa, with many, many, many peculiarities and struck by a deeply engrained culture of non-communication and sloppiness is, I find, an audacious endeavour.
* The circle of book professionals simply is too tight-knit for relative outsiders to be able to crack open the walls around the ivory towers.
* The market of book-buyers (amounting to allegedly only 700 thousand individuals in the entire country) is too small a pond for too many fish.
* With a few very clear and outstanding exceptions (especially amongst the independent bookshops like The Book Lounge and Clarke’s Books) most booksellers see books as a commodity no different from your average pack of Omo washing powder.
* The book industry in South Africa thinks it exists on an island with a few colonies far beyond the horizon (the US and the UK), with nothing in between; they lack the slightest sense of African-ness and are unaware of this vast continent at their feet. It is impossible for any individual to make a dent in this short-sighted approach
* For me as the author/publisher it has shown crucial to not rely on anybody else for anything. No one will ever be as passionate about my product as I myself will ever be, and those needed to assist in sales will most likely not even read one line of what they’re selling, so they have no idea what it is they are supposed to sell.
* Another crucial lesson: start small, with a low print-run and see how that goes. It is indeed way better to make less of a per-copy-profit than believing in the phantom of great turn-overs. If sales go well, one can always decide to take a calculated risk a bit later on.
* Any self-publisher will lack almost everything that helps established publishing houses to reach their market – no matter how good (or average) your book is.

Final word
Had I known all this before I went to print, would I still have self-published?
Yes, I would.
Mostly because of the incredible joy of the entire production process – from start till end (which never comes, by the way).
So, if you’re contemplating publishing your own book: go for it.
But go one small step at a time.
And do have a calculator nearby.

What I had started in 2001, saw a climax in April 2007 with the publication of the Dutch edition for the Netherlands and Belgium. ‘Vlekken van een luipaard’ was nominated one year later for awards in both Belgium and the Netherlands.

These nominations strengthened my resolve to make sure this book would also find an audience in the English-speaking world; and especially in Africa. So: in August 2009 there it was: my self published copy of “Spots”. I had done something the established publishers hadn’t dared.

I’ve learned the hard way that, when dealing with established publishers, a few things really don’t work when you want to take your matter to print.
1) They need months to read a few pages. While a manuscript collects dust on their desk, there is not a lot one can do but wait. And waiting for other people’s decisions is not really my strongest character asset, I noticed.
2) They judge a book according to criteria mostly set up by their accountants and financial managers; these are usually individuals who know a lot about mathematics and statistics, but have zilch feeling for creativity, social relevancy or contemporary needs of a society. For them a niche is something to be desperately avoided.

However…
The advantages of working with a publisher are, of course, manifold. They have networks which no individual author has. They have deals with the big book chains, so their books end up on tables near the front door. At a fee, of course. They also have channels to distribute, nationally and internationally. And they have their own favorite reviewers at newspapers, TV-stations and radio.

Self-publishing
After yet another ‘No, we won’t bring Spots to the market’, I decided in March 2009 to then do it myself. The translation was halfway done, I had found an editor to weed out the mistakes and a designer to do the layout. Of course, although they were and are friends, all of that at a fee.

Most difficult was it to find a distributor. The big ones can’t waste their time on a small publisher – they won’t even reply to emails. And most small distributors with a vague interest in scanning the market for stuff not picked up by the big players however, do also not have the time to engage with unknown names.
This problem of communication will remain, even after signing a contract. I’m at my second distributor now and am considering taking away all my books out of their stock since they simply can’t be bothered to pick up the phone. Let alone to make payments when payments are due.

Without those distributors no chain will even consider stocking a book from a small publisher. There are simply too many people out there who, like me, think they wrote something worthwhile, who are eager to follow up on the well-being of their work.

Finally, a mere two weeks before I was about to go to print did I find a distributor willing to take me and my book on. This crucial step meant ‘Spots’ would find a way to bookshelves.

Going to print
The moment I’d found a distributor I dared taking it all a few steps further. I now needed to generate as much publicity as possible. And it worked. Previews would appear in major publications and magazines; I organised radio interviews and launches. And the feedback so far was positive.

Knowing about this upcoming exposure, I decided to up the print run from 1,000 to 2,000. Raising the print run meant the per copy prize would go down. Which was good for either my pocket, or for the retail prize.
I invested about € 7,500 ($ 10,000) in making sure ‘Spots’ would see the light of day. Most of this was for the printers, another batch for the designer and a third batch for the editor. A magic amount of money, enough to buy a decent second hand car. Or to survive on for a year…

The first results were encouraging. And now, in late 2010, more than a year after the launch?
I have sold about 1200 copies. Most of those I sold myself at presentations, debates and seminars. There are about 800 copies left. I will not be sold out any time soon. My profit per copy sold to bookshops is about € 2,00 ($ 2.50), with most of the revenues going to the bookshops.

By now my book is also for sale via Amazon as a print-on-demand book and as a Kindle-edition, and through another provider it’s even available at Barnes & Nobles in the US and for the Sony e-reader too.
An on-demand book printer at the Internet Arch…

Hindsight
When I take stock of all of this, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, I see where and when I took decisions that I should have taken differently. Most important of those is: I should have printed less copies. Less copies would have increased the price-per-copy for me, and therefore would have limited my profit-per-book, but it would also have meant less of an overall financial risk. I should have gone for a first print run of maybe 700 copies, and then move to print-on-demand. That way I’d have limited my financial risk to close to zero.

Another crucial point is that I overestimated the possibilities for international sales. I had expected, and hoped, that ‘Spots’ would find an audience in Africa as a whole, and maybe even would find a way to the ‘North’. That has not happened. The marketing and distribution networks simply do not exist in Africa. All my book sales in Nairobi were generated by me, while journeying to Nairobi, with boxes of books as excess baggage. There simply are no trade channels in the book industry between South Africa and East Africa. As a bookshop owner in Nairobi told me: ‘It’s easier and cheaper to buy books in the UK and fly them in, then it is to do so from South Africa.”

Learning curve
All in all the experience of self-publishing has been a great learning-curve.
* Trying to enter a market that is as small as it is in South Africa, with many, many, many peculiarities and struck by a deeply engrained culture of non-communication and sloppiness is, I find, an audacious endeavour.
* The circle of book professionals simply is too tight-knit for relative outsiders to be able to crack open the walls around the ivory towers.
* The market of book-buyers (amounting to allegedly only 700 thousand individuals in the entire country) is too small a pond for too many fish.
* With a few very clear and outstanding exceptions (especially amongst the independent bookshops like The Book Lounge and Clarke’s Books) most booksellers see books as a commodity no different from your average pack of Omo washing powder.
* The book industry in South Africa thinks it exists on an island with a few colonies far beyond the horizon (the US and the UK), with nothing in between; they lack the slightest sense of African-ness and are unaware of this vast continent at their feet. It is impossible for any individual to make a dent in this short-sighted approach
* For me as the author/publisher it has shown crucial to not rely on anybody else for anything. No one will ever be as passionate about my product as I myself will ever be, and those needed to assist in sales will most likely not even read one line of what they’re selling, so they have no idea what it is they are supposed to sell.
* Another crucial lesson: start small, with a low print-run and see how that goes. It is indeed way better to make less of a per-copy-profit than believing in the phantom of great turn-overs. If sales go well, one can always decide to take a calculated risk a bit later on.
* Any self-publisher will lack almost everything that helps established publishing houses to reach their market – no matter how good (or average) your book is.

Final word
Had I known all this before I went to print, would I still have self-published?
Yes, I would.
Mostly because of the incredible joy of the entire production process – from start till end (which never comes, by the way).
So, if you’re contemplating publishing your own book: go for it.
But go one small step at a time.
And do have a calculator nearby.

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Aernout Zevenbergen -
About the Author:

Aernout Zevenbergen is a journalist, author, publisher, and speaker. His book Spots of a leopard – on being a man was nominated for awards in Belgium and The Netherlands, and received to great acclaim in especially Kenya and South Africa.

His fields of expertise are: Africa, men & masculinity, male psychology, travelling, and contemporary spirituality

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