JOHN STAHLE is a freelance author, editor, and book designer who offers complete services to individual authors who wish to self-publish. Editing, counsel about logistics and service companies, complete design and production, marketing assistance.
For an overview of this new industry, see my article below.
Book design online portfolio: click here.
Contact John at jstahle[at]nyc.rr.com
> Complete project management for a flat fee
> Editing available at $35 per hour or a flat fee
> Picture/photo research and permissions available at $35/hour
> Covers only: $450 for two complete design concepts (front, back, spine); $175 for each additional concept. Includes full access to an extensive thematic photo image bank.
> Complete Book design: these fee packages are based on a published length of 250 typeset pages at 450 words per page. Longer manuscripts can be quoted. Inside pages fee includes one complete correction round. Further correction rounds, then or later, at $35/hour. Manuscripts must be prepared in MSWord.
Books without illustrations: $850 for inside pages, $450 for two cover concepts (front, back, spine); $175 for each additional concept
Books with pictures, charts, or footnotes instead of endnotes: $975 for inside pages, $450 for two cover concepts (front, back, spine)
> Poetry Chapbooks (usually less than 80 pages, often saddle-stitched instead of perfect bound): flat fee for complete chapbook (inside, covers, and all interface with the self-publishing service): $850 for a manuscript of up to 70 pages. Includes access to a very large type library and image bank for really stylish choices so you don't look like anyone else!
JOHN STAHLE’s background as writer, editor, graphic designer:
> editor and designer of a successful literary/art print quarterly (click here)
> freelance writing to order for NYC nonprofits
> web content and articles published regularly
> self-published author of three books (fiction and non-fiction)
> co-moderator of a writing workshop, 2005-2008
> book design online portfolio: click here
THE NEW WORLD OF SELF-PUBLISHING
Create your own book affordably, market it yourself, reap the benefit
Copyright by John Stahle, published on AssociatedContent.com and other websites
Let's say you've been a business consultant for years, helping clients as an expert in your field. You decide you are ready to put your business wisdom between covers as a book, knowing that as you promote your title, you promote yourself. But how to do it? Well, there's an old way and there's a new way.
The old way, you might take a year to find a publisher, who offers a paltry advance with even paltrier publicity for your book. Every copy you sell enriches the publisher, not you. And a couple years later, your publisher drops you. Now you're out of print and back where you started. Or, you can publish it yourself the old way, shelling out thousands of dollars to a book printer, taking delivery on boxes and boxes of books, knowing that each copy sold will have to be packed up and mailed out by you, one by one. Surely there's a better way!
There is. Welcome to the world of self-publishing and digital on-demand printing, whose dramatically simplified logistics make book-creating cheap and do-able for anyone. And you don't have to guess which service to use because the public has already shaken them out for you. For most paperback books, Lulu.com and CreateSpace.com are now favored. For photography books and heavily illustrated color cookbooks, blurb.com is the favorite, with results artfully printed but not cheap.
In self-publishing, your manuscript is first turned into a computer book design by a designer you hire. (Lulu also permits you to do it yourself, but unhappily, it looks that way.) Your digital files (one high-res PDF for the inside pages, one for the covers) are uploaded on-line to a self-publishing service like Lulu—for no charge. You order a finished proof copy at cost (less than $15 with shipping and handling, depending on page count). Ten days later, your book is sitting in your mailbox, ready to check. You revise it as needed, upload replacement files, and now your book is ready to sell on-line at Amazon and other sites. When an Amazon customer buys your title, the order is e-mailed to a digital on-demand printer. Ten minutes later, a finished book emerges from what looks like an overgrown Xerox machine: perfect-bound, with durable laminated color covers and crisp, clean printing inside—exactly like any paperback book from any bookshop. Because your title is manufactured, one copy at a time, only when purchased, there is no inventory. And your book stays in print as long as you want it to. You can revise it periodically, uploading new versions to the database.
You also set your retail price. My first self-published book was a 6x9" perfect-bound fiction paperback of 124 pages. Color covers, black and white insides on cream stock. I set the retail at $10 to keep it affordable, out of which I get about $2.50; the rest is the cost of making the book and a small royalty for Lulu as my service. But customers can also order it another way: as a PDF downloaded instantly to their computer systems. With that option, because nothing is manufactured, you keep most of the sale. My download retails for only $6, of which I get nearly $5.
Once your book hits the market, the real fun begins. You are in charge of your own marketing, and you reap the benefits of success. You create your own publishing imprint, the imprint you can use for all your books. At Lulu, there are a number of inexpensive and helpful marketing packages you can buy, starting with the $99 basic that gets you your own ISBN number and places you on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, and other websites. For less than $50, you can get reviewed by Publisher's Weekly or Library Journal; for $30, you can email every library in the country about your book. The only thing you can't do in self-publishing is appear on a bookstore shelf. Bookstores still want 50% off and the freedom to return unsold copies whenever they want. Since most book purchases are made online, this industry is gradually becoming a dinosaur. Too bad for them, no big deal for you. You will be marketing and selling strictly online from now on. And don't forget your own website, the main place to promote your book. Amazon will pay you for each customer you send from your website to theirs to buy your book. And Google also has ways to help push your book--for free.
Even so, can you decide later you want a publisher after all? Yes--precisely because your marketing created a public for your title. As a rule, if your book sells 1,000 copies in one year (which is more than many publishers can manage for their own titles), they consider you have a "platform" (a public) to deliver to them, and they will put you in bookstores, if that is what you want. All the cutting-edge stuff is being self-published today, so publishers know enough to embrace this industry when it suits them.
So how much upfront investment do you need to make? It depends on how much editing and design your manuscript requires. Yes, you can upload your own MSWord.doc to Lulu after changing its format to match their book page specs. But the result looks like word processing. In a crowded market, your book should be unique and stylish, so it's worth a few hundred dollars to hire the right book designer. I design books at rates affordable to any individual, with very professional results.
Self-publishing means anyone ready to write a book won't have to dream anymore. You create your book, you market it, you reap the benefit, you promote yourself. And it never goes out of print. Self-publishing is the perfect marriage of free speech and free enterprise.
LINKS
http://www.lulu.com/
https://www.createspace.com/
http://www.blurb.com/
