AboutBill Frank Expertise I help authors become publishers. I'm a self-publishing consultant with resources in editing, graphic design, printing, distribution and marketing. I can help you turn your manuscript into a published book. I identify the best distribution channels for your book. I also help you build a marketing plan to sell the book. I specialize in non-fiction books and I take fiction books on a selective basis.
Experience Book layout and design; book printing; channels of distribution and book marketing.
Organizations Publishers' Marketing Association. Book Publicists of Southern California.
Education/Credentials MBA in Marketing and Finance. BA in Economics.
Expert: Bill Frank Date: 6/7/2007 Subject: Publishing for the first time
Question Bill, I'm graphic designer interested on publishing my first book. As I was reading on the Internet about the publishing possibilities, got confused. What's the best way to publish a book without submitting my work to a publishing company? Is there any possibility to do it on my own and save some bucks? What do you think?
Answer Linda, congratulations on committing to publish your first book. What genre book are you writing?
There are four fundamental ways to publish a book: traditional royalty publishing (where you submit your manuscript to a publisher - through an agent - and they produce the book for you), self-publishing, POD publishing and vanity publishing (which has several forms, but I'll lump them together for the sake of this discussion).
You don't want to pursue traditional publishing, so that leaves the other three. I'd advise against vanity publishing unless you have a lot of money to spend. That leaves self-publishing and POD publishing.
Self-publishing is publishing on your own, as the name would indicate. As a self-publisher, you take on all the duties and responsibilities of a traditional publisher. Those include: editing, layout & design (which is your specialty), printing, storing, shipping, distribution, returns (publishing's dirty little secret) and finance & administration.
Marketing your book is your responsibility whether your self-publish or go with a traditional publisher or go with a POD publisher.
POD publishing stands for Print-On-Demand publishing. In this model, you give the rights to your book to a POD publisher who takes on the responsibilities of printing, storing, shipping, some distribution and returns.
In the self-publishing model, you must pay for every step of the process. In return, you get to keep more money for each book sold.
In the POD publishing model, the POD publisher spends money on the up-front duties and responsibilities. In return, the POD publisher pays you a royalty for each book sold. The amount of the royalty will vary from POD publisher to POD publisher.
Of the two choices, using a POD publisher expends the least amount of capital up front.
There are many good POD publishers. Several I recommend are: Infinity Publishing, Outskirts Press and iUniverse.
