Your book your way... Look Out!
Article by author Richard Paul Tanos written June 2004
One of the alternatives of self-publishing is and has been for the past several years something called, POD, or "Print On Demand" publishing. Unlike traditional publishing, this method of self-publishing will usually stress upon the author that using a POD to have their book printed is inexpensive, quick, and reliable. POD publishers are in fact a form of vanity press only because you as the author will pay to see your work in print. POD publishers will also tell you as part of their marketing strengths is that one, it is totally easy and quick, as you can order any number of books and pay the same amount for each book. Secondly, you can have your book printed the way that you want, including book size, font, content, and your cover, which all come at a cost of course. In other words, if you want to order one book or a hundred books, it doesn’t matter since the amount per book, once figured out by the POD, will remain constant and will not change, unless the POD publisher decides to undertake a price increase.
Before you can determine if POD publishing is for you, it is imperative and vital that you understand the pricing of these perfect bound, paperback novels. There are four components to this puzzle with each having their hands in your proverbial cookie jar. First, the printer; this is the guy that will physically print your book and your cover and then glue them all together. Second, you have your publisher, or the guy who assigns the ISBN number to your book, and then not only handles the physical formatting of your book, but submits your books to the online bookstores, such as Amazon, and Barnes & Noble. Third, you now have the guy, the most important guy, and the one who represents the bookstores, both the chains like Barnes and Noble, or Books a Million, and then the thousands of Independents. Fourth, but not least, there is you, the author, who started this whole mess in the first place. With all kidding aside, you must understand that having each of these guys involved in your venture of being published, means four people now have their hands in determining the size of your book pie. For this example, I will use nice round numbers; the printer guy will want around $6.00, the publisher guy around another $6.00, the bookstore guy will demand a commission, somewhere around another $6.00, and then, you, the author, who in this case started this whole exercise, yet comes in last when it relates to profits, and you will get somewhere around, give or take, a whopping $3.00. When you add all this up, the price has to be, and I’m serious now, it has to be the sum of the whole, which is very close to $21.00 – at that price you have suddenly entered into more than publishing suicide.
Publishers that sell books to authors and make a profit is not a new concept, however, if the plan stopped there, you as the author would do relatively all right with your pricing. For example, you could buy your book at $9.00 and then retail the same book for $15.00 and make a $6.00 profit on each one sold. Man, if it was that easy! The bookstore guy needs to be added into this formula to sell your books and offer a wide range of distribution. The only way to compare these prices is to visit your local bookstores and try and find books of the same size, and take down some prices. As soon as you, the author, digests and compares your POD publishing price to what other publishing companies are physically selling their books in the bookstores at, is when you, being the author, suddenly figure out that charging $21.00 for a paperback book, not to mention for an unknown author, is totally out of whack and the confusion of book pricing should start pounding on your brain. No matter how you slice your POD publishing deal, you being the author, will no doubt pay almost exactly what the bookstores want to pay for the same book.
Other advantages given to you as being the author, is that you will remain in control of your work, you still have rights to your work, and that you will have your book printed exactly the way you want, including the cover design, which by the way, needs to be paid for by you before the POD will print your book. Also, in some cases, if you decide that you want a shiny cover, called laminate, you will pay extra for that as well.
Authors have been using these POD publishers for years since actually it makes sense to order 10 books to start with, then hopefully as book signing appearances develop, family get-together’s transpire, or bookstore events take hold, you, as the author will now be able to order more books as need, as long as two things are adhered to. First, you must prepay for your order of books and second the printing and shipping times must followed, which the POD dictates. In other words you have virtually no control over this time period making the costs and time constraints a major issue. If you, being an author cannot manage your time, then trust me, this option for publishing, will for you, be a certain total nightmare.
I used a POD service two previous times, only as a form of rescue from an unscrupulous Publisher, and let me share with you the problem about these POD publishers. Firstly, the major problem is so obvious that authors seem to ignore it and the reason for this is as clear as hearing a bell. Suddenly, you as the author can now order a small quantity of books and not be penalized for either breaking your contract or being taken to the cleaners by paying thousands of dollars for what you are being told to order, which is hundreds of books. As soon as you, being the author, figure this out, your POD just became not only your emotional savior, but no doubt your main supplier of your book, even if they do charge you around $9 a book -- for each book.
What happens next is simple yet so very wrong. The POD will share with you all the words that you need to hear in order to feel great about your decision to pay a large fee just to sign up and have your books published. Next, the amount of money for each book is crudely calculated and then, you get to hear the extras from a real person. This person will be called for a better word, "The Author Helper," or what I like to call, your own delegated person dedicated totally in assisting you with your efforts in becoming a full-fledged author. Now once you feel great about having someone talk to you, which by the way is totally non-existent with several publishers that strategically use e-mail services for communicating. You then become comfortable knowing that now you can save around $2 to $3 a book in your printing costs. Sorry, but now let’s examine the extras, and believe me there are many. Extra costs: $50plus an hour with a minimum to make changes to your text, $18.00 to ship your proof to you for approval, 3 weeks for the POD to digest and process your changes when you send them back (if any), 2 more weeks to print the number of copies you requested, and then you need to fork over the amount needed to pay the POD before they ship your order to you. Also, if there is a problem, a mistake, or a correction, the entire process repeats itself at your expense – again! Okay, now let’s evaluate this, you make a few changes, perhaps one line on 6 pages, and then you send to your POD the new digital file, or the file that they the POD wants to receive from you. Now they charge you $50 to service these changes and print another bunch of books. When you add into your equation the proof cost, the alteration cost, and then the five weeks you need to wait before your updated books arrive, you are not only out these extra costs, but you have wasted four weeks of possible marketing efforts. Again, if you are a person who has trouble managing their time, please believe me when I tell you, you might as well throw the towel in right freaking now!
As far as I have researched in this area, each POD publisher does offer very attractive packages for you the author to sign up for, and yes, by the term signing up for does mean lots of money, and a contract of some sort. A few yeas back, when I used a POD, I personally signed up for a middle of the road package, as I figured back then I could not go wrong; besides I would be buying my books for under $10 each, which at the time was my mission in life – reducing my book costs. After six months or so, I decided to upgrade my status on one of my books with my POD publisher for another huge amount of money, and I was extremely curious of what the extras would be; both in physical things and more importantly marketing and all for around another $400plus. To sum this up in a nut shell, other than $20 of promotional paper items, a few on-line website links, I think that was about it! I looked regularly on the publisher’s website to see if my sales on that book had increased – as I figured out by now and really not being surprised -- they did not!
By now, an average person trying to get a book published would have left the country, burned their book, jumped from a bridge, or at best, out rightly tossed in their towel. However, I continued, and the more I did not like what I was seeing, the more I dug deeper into this clouded, very annoying, and totally bogus field of publishing, as it seemed that every publisher had their own angle to attract the author money.
My books arrived, nicely done and I could now start selling them to friends and family. I enjoyed not getting those annoying phone calls to order more books, as I remembered that voice stating so vehemently that it was a once-in-a-life-time special discount, and I could not go wrong. My books were now ready to sell, but the price was still a nightmare to me, since I had no earthly idea of how much to charge for my books.
Next, I decided to write a tribute book for my brother, who perished a few months earlier, being the victim of depression. I decided to donate my profits of this book to a local group dealing with depression and the support to the survivors. I stated this to my POD publisher, and actually a small part of me did expect some kind of sympathy, perhaps a book discount, or maybe even a free pass on this small book. Let me explain my thoughts -- I thought that because I already signed up and paid my POD publisher thousands of dollars for two earlier books, and then upgraded one of them to the highest package available, in my mind it was conceivable that I might receive some sort of special attention. It did not happen! I contacted my POD publisher again and signed up for the most inexpensive package, since this book would only be available to our family and close friends.
It was around the sixth week into my new book, the tribute book about my late brother, is when I realized that my POD publisher was taking their sweet time and not following the same schedule as my first two books. Where did they go? What happened? I had to call them several times to arrange the shipment of my free copies, which took well over a week to accomplish just getting them to ship out. I did not have to experience this delay the first time that I dealt with this POD Okay, I know, since I paid for the cheapest package, that I have been obviously red flagged in their system, at least on this book, but I guess a previous track record does not account for anything with this POD.
Most POD publishing companies advertise with various phrases that craftily say something to the effect that it is your book and you can have it published any way that you want. Well, if this was true then why do us as author’s have to follow so many strict guidelines when we submit manuscripts, process and handle covers, and then those changes or updates that present themselves once in a while.
I personally now understand, especially after publishing my own book from scratch, that these POD publishers only know one or two ways to get your book from your computer system to their digital printing computer system. The printer I found, told me flatly, "Don’t worry, just send us the manuscript any way you want… we got it all!" WOW! What an eye opener.
In summary, POD publishing is not for everyone, but they do bridge a huge gap between traditional publishers and the worst of the worst when it comes to non-traditional money-making unscrupulous publishing companies. You, being an author, now will have to spend more time researching publishers before you sign and pay the bucks to see our work in print. Ask your publisher if they are a POD... if you get a three page letter or email, your were right!
Richard Paul Tanos, Author