My story starts simply enough. I wrote a children’s book for a group of fifth graders and then shelled out $6,000 to have them printed and shipped. My Crazy Christmas Catastrophe Cat originated as a writing workshop activity. I wrote the rhyming poem in roughly 30 minutes, printed it and read it to the students the same morning.
The kids laughed out loud. They wanted pictures. They begged for more stories about the crazy catastrophe cat. Any children’s author who has experienced this impetuous demand for their book understands that this is what drives an earnest purpose in writing for kids. Any children’s author who has tried to convince an agent that their book commands this power over children also knows that unless you can convert that enthusiasm into potential sales, publishers express as much interest in your book as six-year-olds have in Algebra.
My cousin, Dwelia Haas, teaches art to middle school students. I sent her my story on a whim, not asking her to illustrate the book, but more for feedback. She sent almost a dozen color images as jpeg files in a matter of days. The first picture of a fat yellow cat entangled in Christmas tree lights filled me with pride and determination. My book came to life on my computer monitor, and once again, I had an impetus for making it “real.”
My first submission was to a Mississippi publisher. They found it to be “an engaging story with delightful illustrations,” but not so entertaining as to cough up the bucks to publish and promote it. As a newspaper columnist who has submitted her wares countless times over the years to editors and syndicates, I accept rejection as part of my professional writer’s world. I realize, too, that books and columns and articles are just so much marketable merchandise to those in the business of buying creative material. I knew that the book I had written along with Dwelia’s illustrations struck a chord with children, made them laugh, and most importantly, made them want to read. I decided to focus my efforts and funds on self-publishing my children’s books instead of the lengthy and often dead-end process of submitting to agents or publishing houses.
I found the Web site for PrintIndustry.com, filled out their form for accepting bids on print jobs and received over 50 responses. Meanwhile, my editor, Robyn Jackson at The Hattiesburg American offered to supply an ISBN number for the title. She established Timothy Lane Press to publish her own title, Lakota Moon, and agreed to add My Crazy Christmas Catastrophe Cat to her list of published titles at Bowker’s Books in Print. I designed the book’s cover and paginated the text of the story along with the illustrations using Broderbund’s The Print Shop Pro Publisher software. Once the book was ready as a PDF file, I mailed a CD to The Miner Group in Minneapolis, MN, the printer whose price and professionalism satisfied my request for solid color reproduction in a saddle-stitched book at an affordable price. My Crazy Christmas Catastrophe Cat retails for $9.95. I sell the books for school fundraisers and return 60% to the school. This works well with my mission to encourage kids to read and write by speaking to them at school functions, and the school PTO loves the nice return on the sales, while I still enjoy a nice profit.
My only surprise with publishing the first title in my Crazy Cat Series was the shipping costs. With a book signing scheduled on a Saturday and no books in hand the Monday before, I had the printer overnight two cartons on Thursday, which cost in the neighborhood of $400. Leaving 2,500 copies in storage with the printer, I received the remainder of 5,000 copies the following week to the tune of $618. In my naiveté and rush to get a Christmas book in time for seasonal sales, I failed to consider the cost of shipping in my selection process, as well as warehousing charges. I also failed to adequately investigate local printing services. Since my first publishing venture, I have found two local shops that could have offered competitive pricing, considering the high cost of shipping from an out-of-state printer.
While assembling the first book in the Crazy Cat Series, a 1stBooks representative called with a proposal to print an anthology of my columns. As a writer who pines for the success of such columnist icons like Erma Bombeck and Lewis Grizzard, the temptation to self-publish an anthology certainly teased my writer’s ego. Yet, having been advised by countless agents that submitting anthologies to publishers is the “kiss of death” for a writer, I explained to the representative that my efforts at the time focused on publishing my children’s books, with color, something I knew most POD companies do not offer.
“Oh, but we have a promotion to offer 20 authors the opportunity to have their books printed with our new full color press,” he plied. “Your book could be one of the first off the press! Plus we will waive the $1,400 set up fee.” The man proposed two things I find difficult to refuse: being first in line and saving money. “I’m in,” I said.
I called my illustrator. “How soon can you illustrate another book?” I asked, tentatively. “Say, maybe twice as many illustrations as the Christmas book?” Momentary panic ensued on the part of the artist, followed by “I can probably get most of them done on the weekend.”
I wrote the second book in a matter of days, sending picture ideas to Dwelia as the story progressed. In an effort to forward the text and images to 1stBooks in time to receive copies for a trip to the Erma Bombeck Writers' Workshop in March, we completed the project by the third week of October. I used FTP software to transmit the jpeg files of the illustrations and the PDF of the cover design to 1stBooks and e-mailed the text.
We received a CD for review in December, with only one minor punctuation change, an error on the part of the publisher, noteworthy only because changes that are due to author error involve extra fees. We received the first copy in late December. 1stBooks launched the book on their Web site in early January of 2004, three months in advance of our previously determined release date. My overall investment was right at $1,100.
Two surprises that stung quite a bit with my POD experience involved pricing of the title and supplying brick and mortar “big name” bookstores. The 1stBooks representative gave me a scale of prices, the minimum being $15.75 for my book. I could opt for this lowest price and royalty return, or higher pricing and proportionally larger author royalties. Once I selected the price at which 1stBooks would sell the title from their Web site, a corresponding price with another percentage for royalties would be established based on the $15.75 price per book. The second price is what bookstores would charge customers. I opted for the lowest royalty and lowest retail price, which evolved into a whopping $20.15 per book as sold through bookstores.
Another sting was the fact that if I wanted the big retail bookstores to carry my book in their “brick and mortar” stores, I had to act as the supplier. Unless you have a proven record of selling hundreds of books each sales quarter, the distributors for stores like Books A Million, Barnes and Noble, and Borders may not make your book available to their buyers because they cannot return unsold books to POD companies. 1stBooks now offers an Author Service called the “Booksellers Return Program” for an additional fee. This service involves the author contracting with Springboard, Inc., a third party logistics expert, to handle returned, unsold copies from 1st Books distribution partners and those books bought by booksellers directly from 1stBooks. Springboard then makes these books available to the author for purchase at a discount.
When contacted by American Wholesale Book Company to supply my self-published Christmas title to fill an order they received from Books A Million, I asked if they would also carry my second title when released by 1st Books. The buyer informed me of the policy on POD companies but offered to carry the books if I would supply them and accept returned unsold copies. This requires that you buy your own books and have the POD company ship them to the distributor or your shipping them. This is a huge undertaking as experienced with my Christmas title and mailing hundreds of books from my home office.
While you can arrange for the online versions of these large retail stores to carry your book as supplied by POD companies, the actual monetary return you see on these sales is highly disappointing. An author must sell thousands of books to make this arrangement financially beneficial. For every copy of the Christmas title Amazon.com sold at $9.95, I received $2.46, which was reduced further by the cost of shipping the books in packs of ten to their warehouse. Amazon.com will not keep your book in stock unless heavy sales warrant it. Orders are forwarded to your online account and you ship titles accordingly.
Comparing the two processes, there are plusses and minuses to both. Securing your own printer, obtaining your own ISBN and basically doing everything a publisher would do is a lot of hard work and can test your desire to see your book in print, not to mention the fact that you can count on spending at least $5,000 to get a per book price that makes your product a potentially profitable piece of merchandise. I made my books available on consignment, which worked well for bookstore owners, but makes accounting difficult for me as some stores have yet to pay for the books or account for remainders.
On the upside, with self-publishing, you retain control over everything, the content, the final product, and the price, something that is highly valuable to the owner of a creative work. I have since recouped my printing expenses but have not turned a net profit. I have been unable to pay my illustrator for her vital contribution. With an early marketing campaign and additional school fundraisers and signings in 2004, I hope to turn a profit from the Christmas title. Our agreement? That if these babies of ours ever turn a profit, Timothy Lane Press gets 5% of sales, with the illustrator and I splitting profits 50/50.
Using a POD company provided the opportunity for me to simply submit the story and the illustrations and let someone else handle the production, although I did produce the book with the same Print Shop Pro Publisher software to get a feel for the final product. The color reproduction achieved by 1stBooks was top-notch, which is critical in making a children’s book look and feel like the real deal. The POD company handles orders, shipping and reporting sales and providing tax documents. They maintain a link on their Web site where customers can read a preview of the book, information about the author and illustrator and an excerpt for the book, as well as ordering information. Remember, however, that for many book stores to carry your book, you will have to act as supplier to their distributors. While you do get a reduction in cost per book as the author, shipping costs quickly eat up those savings.
At this point, my POD experience with sales is too weak to know if the benefits of having someone else carry the burden of publishing duties and distribution is worth the loss of control and decreased profits per book. I did not purchase additional marketing services from my POD company. My official launch date for regional sales, at the end of February, will herald my attempt as an author to effectively market My Crazy Coastal Catastrophe Cat and generate solid sales.
If nothing else, I now have substantial firsthand experience in what it takes to put a book together, get it ready for print and market it. I have a new understanding and deep appreciation for what publishers do to get books to buyers. Any author, whether self-published or represented in the marketplace by houses like Random House or Simon and Schuster, must work hard to publicize and push their work to the forefront of their reading audience. The focus should always be on producing a quality product that appeals to the people for whom an author writes and making it as accessible as possible. Self-publishing and POD companies make that possible for anyone with the money and desire to do just that.
© 2004, Kristen Twedt
