Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #437343 in Books
• Published on: 2006-07-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 432 pages

Customer Reviews

Yes indeed
Yes indeed, this is a super book. It would be even better if there was a United Kingdom edition, or supplementary chapter to explain the diffences between self publishing in UK to USA ie how the the uk market differs, terminology, and typical pricing. Nevertheless, these differences are minor compared to the very valuable information you'll find here.

Self publishing is, like most businesses, incredibly hard for most people, espcially authors who are often more creative than business-minded. This book wont change your genetic make up, but if your savy enought to win in the publishing world, then this is ideal.

Usually a successful business person would keep such hard-won knowlege to himself. This guy takes great pleasure in sharing his. Every page shines with a genuine desire to patiently teach anyone with the good sense to listen.

27 Years of Unequaled Wisdom to Allow You to Profit from Your Writing!

Most would-be authors in the U.S. dream of signing a four book deal with Random House for over $10 million . . . and then skyrocketing to the top of the best seller list. That does happen, but not very often.

The average new author who attracts a commercial publisher will probably be offered an advance of $7,500 and won't earn that amount back in actual royalties. In the process, the author will be disappointed to find that the publisher does little more than print the book, put it in a catalogue and take orders from those who demand the book. If there's to be publicity, the author must provide it. In exchange, the author will earn less than 10% of the cover price of the book from each sale.

After having been down that route, it's not surprising that authors begin to realize that selling 5,000 copies that one self-publishes can earn a profit of 5-10 times as much with relatively little more effort . . . and not much of a capital outlay.

So, if you don't get that Random House deal, you probably can still earn a lot more money for yourself by becoming your own publisher. There are lots of ways to do this from e-books as digital downloads to traditional hard cover volumes. You can have a printer make a few thousand of the latter . . . or a print on demand printer will make one at a time as you receive orders.

Naturally, you can pay someone several thousand dollars to help you through the process.

But it's a better bet to buy Dan Poynter's Self-Publishing Manual. Dan's forgotten more about how to self-publish a book that most "experts" will ever learn.

This book covers the following important topics:
1. How to decide if you want to self-publish and how
2. Writing your book (from picking a subject to gaining advances)
3. Starting your own publishing company (if that's appropriate for you)
4. Book production (from designing to typesetting to layout to final book)
5. Launching your book (getting on the radar screen)
6. Pricing
7. Book promotion (advertising, publicity, reviews, press kits and interviews)
8. Attracting book buyers (distribution, libraries, schools, promotions, fund-raisers, subsidiary rights)
9. Fulfillment (from your warehouse to the book buyer)
10. Dealing with the changes in your life that follow being published.

The sections are very detailed, reference lots of other great sources (including Dan's own wonderful Web site), suppliers and answers to the most common questions every new author has.

As much as I like this book, I must point out its one glaring weakness. Dan has been a celebrity in the book authoring field for so long that he somewhat overstates how easy it is to attract positive publicity. But if you keep at it, someday you'll find it as easy as Dan does.

By the way, if you ever have a chance to attend a conference where Dan speaks, be sure to attend. He's even more helpful in person.

If you think you might want to self-publish, this is the book for you.

Good luck!

This book has helped me every step of the way
I bought The Self-Publishing Manual: How to Write, Print and Sell Your Own Book without even knowing what to expect, just relying on the comments other people made. I must say now that, although the manual is written for the US market, its contents are probably universal. As someone who has just published my first book, I consult with Dan Poynter's book almost every day, when new issues with copyright, agents, wholesalers, distributors and so on come up. It has never let me down yet: concise, easy-to-understand information helps you all the way. I highly recommend this book to all self-publishing authors.