You’ve done it.  Written your masterpiece.  Now what?
These days in the world of publishing, you’ve got choices – and some decisions to make.  Especially as a first time author, self-publishing may be the best choice.  New Print-on-demand (POD) options make it simple for you to register your own ISBN number and list your book on Amazon.com, update your material whenever you need to, and all the while keep the process cheap and simple.  Here are some reasons you might want to self-publish using POD technology:

1. Small initial investment
With most POD publishers your up-front fees are minimal or non-existent.  This makes self-publishing a book a far more accessible process than it used to be.  While traditional publishers can create cheap books in large batches, you probably have to buy thousands at a time; making for an expensive initial investment.  With POD, not having to tie up huge amounts of cash in traditional runs means that you can control your cash flow and use your resources for other things, like the editing, layout and marketing of your book.

2. Selling online
Websites like Lulu.com and CreateSpace.com will take care of all aspects of the sale of your book online. For a percentage (usually 20 – 40%) of the profits, they’ll do the ordering, financial and shipping transactions – at the end of the sale you’ll just receive your cheque.  Handing off the administrative duties leaves you free to focus on other things – like promoting your book.  The key here is that transacting the sale of your book is effortless and costs you nothing up front.  They don’t get any money until a sale is made.  And, your book is out there for the whole world to discover.

3. Selling at events or seminars, and special orders
Probably you’ll need copies quickly and only a few at a time.  With POD publishers you can order exactly the number of copies you’ll need and have them delivered in time for your presentation.  And you can do this whenever you need to without being saddled with unwanted, expensive extra copies.

4. Revising your work
For anything timely, or with a business or educational focus, the ability to update and revise your book is invaluable.  With POD publishers the books are only printed when ordered so you can ensure that each copy is up-to-date; you also won’t have any outdated stock lying around. It’s as easy as making the changes to your manuscript in your home office and sending off the revised .PDF.  And, given that the set up fee is so small, you can do this as often as is necessary ensuring the resource value of your book.

There are a few things to keep in mind:
If you want to include colour artwork in your book, that can get expensive.  POD may charge a lot for colour pages (as much as 12 times the fee for black and white) – make sure you research the details carefully.  As well, if you’re looking for a hard cover, special paper or special sizes you may run into difficulties with POD.  Usually it’s available, but at a premium.

So, the choice between POD and traditional publishing really comes down to your resources and the requirements of your particular book.  As long as you know what you want, you have options.  Get out there and create!

By Katie Mead

(Need help with the particulars?  Give us a call to chat – we can provide proofreading, editing, book layout and design – all at very reasonable rates.  We’ve done it before: check out The Director In The Classroom.)