[FRIAM] Book publishing advice needed

Sat Jul 4 14:09:00 EDT 2020

Jochen:
The deal being offered strikes me as a bad deal.

Background:  I have been practicing and teaching about "Be Your Own
Publisher" for nearly 15 years.  There are, in my opinion, some major
problems with all publishers today.  It starts with control of the
copyright.  I think YOU should want to maintain control of the copyright to
your work.  It will depend on the contract, but many or most publishers
will try to lock down the copyright in their favor for all -- ALL -- forms
of your work in perpetuity and throughout the universe.  Sometimes quite
literally.

Second, you should assume -- especially with a small publisher and you, not
being as well known  as Stephen King or Daniel Steele  -- the publisher
will do little if anything to promote your book beyond a mention in its
catalog and, maybe, some promotional links on Amazon.  Given that, a 5
percent royalty should be seen as a con.

Third, given your computing experience, you should find it easy to format
and produce the book yourself.  I have used Lulu.com for years.  It is
especially good if you want to have both hardback, paperback and PDF
editions.  Again the advantages: you keep the copyright, you can set (and
change) the prices and to a degree the royalties.  Also, Lulu and Amazon
handle all the backend financial arrangements and administration and pay
directly and quickly.  I also use a very good, high quality digital printer
in Albuquerque for paperback editions.  It is Lithexcel
<https://lithexcel.com/services/print.html>.  It handles all the printing
(one copy to any number) quickly, along with all the fulfillment and
accounting. The folks there will also, for only $25, set up your book in
the Amazon inventory search engine.  Finally, there is Amazon's
self-publishing arm
<https://www.bookbaby.com/free-publishing-guides?utm_campaign=GOOSL31&utm_source=SITELINK&utm_medium=cpc&mkwid=sNzCXe5z8_dc|pcrid|238281756657|pmt|e|pkw|amazon%20book%20publishing|slid|cWU1oXIv|targetids|kwd-362938383597|groupid|48812614458|&pgrid=48812614458&ptaid=kwd-362938383597&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0YD4BRD2ARIsAHwmKVnFci42apQ6vWUruvHuYX-FOum9VCF7bx83c_tSMHGoby8yylL_RTMaAjOEEALw_wcB>.
While Amazon might take a bigger slice, the control over all aspects is in
your hands.

Here's the problem/challenge with all of these.  *YOU* have to do the
marketing/publicity/promotion.  But so what?  If you today sign with any
publisher of any size you will have to do the same thing.

Hope this helps.  Feel free to contact me with questions.  Also you might
want to see https://bit.ly/2ZvihKc
Tom

============================================
Tom Johnson - tom at jtjohnson.com
Institute for Analytic Journalism   --     Santa Fe, NM USA
505.577.6482(c)                                    505.473.9646(h)
*NM Foundation for Open Government* <http://nmfog.org>
*Check out It's The People's Data
<https://www.facebook.com/pages/Its-The-Peoples-Data/1599854626919671>*

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On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 1:29 AM Jochen Fromm <jofr at cas-group.net> wrote:

> At one end of the spectrum there are the 5 big commercial publishers
> Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin Random House and Simon &
> Schuster. They only publish stuff their agents select to make a lot of
> money. There are also the big academic publishers like OUP, CUP, HUP and
> MIT Press, which preferably publish strictly peer-reviewed content from
> professors at Ivy League universities who made their PhD at the age of 20.
>
> At the other end of the spectrum there are "predatory publishers" who
> publish anything you submit as long as you pay enough money for it. Open
> access books can also be very expensive. Publishing an "open access book"
> at De Gruyter for example costs up to 8000 $. You pay for it so that other
> people read it. It is basically some kind of advertising of your own work.
>
> For my own new book I finally have an offer from a small publisher in
> Washington D.C. who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. They are
> really small and offer 5% royalties. Should I accept this offer or wait for
> a better one? It is the only one from more than 25 publishers I have asked,
> and the publishers at the moment are flooded with submissions. :-/
>
> https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2020/mar/26/novel-writing-during-coronavirus-crisis-outbreak
>
> -J.
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