If God is calling you to writing, the options today are much more interesting than a few years ago. A few years ago you had basically two options: finding a royalty publisher or vanity publishing. The royalty publisher pays for the costs of editing, publishing, marketing, and distribution and pays you a royalty. The publisher takes most of the risk. You can make good money on a popular book if the volume sold is high.
When using a vanity publisher, you pay the costs for editing, publishing, marketing, and distribution. You take all the risks and get all the gravy. The publisher prints a few thousand and delivers them. You stock the books. The problem here is that most authors don’t have sufficient marketing and distribution skills and finances to get the printed books into the market. This is often a good alternative, however, if you are a popular speaker and sell the books at your conferences and workshops. In most cases, however, you end up selling a few copies to friends and church members and that’s about it. Our book Discovering Your City that I authored with Bob Waymire was vanity-published. It is used in many classes in seminaries and workshops and we’ve recovered our costs and more.
Now there is a new and third option: Print on Demand. With this method your book is stored on a computer. When orders arrive, books are printed based on the order. You don’t have a large print investment or a large stock of books. When you need more books, you tell them how many you need and those are printed and delivered. With a quality print on demand publisher (such as Winepress , the printed books are indistinguishable from those printed by a royalty publisher.
The Pros of Print On Demand (POD) are a smaller upfront investment to publish your book, and some POD companies can get the books into good distribution and have good marketing. In addition, some POD companies can move your book to a royalty publisher if the sales become aggressive. You own the copyright on a POD book. The down side is that the cost of the book in the store can be a little higher and (with some PODs) you have to do the marketing and distribution.
Want more information? Athena Dean , Director of Publishing at WinePress, is offering a free workshop for potential authors. We highly recommend this. The next conference is online the Tuesday evening of February 21, starting at 5:30. It lasts 1 1/2 hrs, and a Part II is the next Tuesday at 5:30 – another 1 1/2 hrs. To register for the free conferences, see http://www.winepresspub.com and click on the menu option for the free conference. Register and then return on February 21.
