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Matt Pramschufer Talks About Self Publishing

Hi, My name is Matt Pramschufer.  My father owns BooksJustBooks, RJ Communications and Selfpublishing.com.  My expertise lies in website design, and website marketing but I have had many years experience in the self-publishing industry.  Being a family business I was naturally drawn into learning the ins and outs of the self-publishing industry.  I may not know everything there is to know about self-publishing but I will try my best to inform you and give you the most accurate information about the self-publishing process.  If there is any questions that I run into that I am unable to answer or am unsure of, don't fret, email me your question and I will make sure that I get you the correct answer.

What is the difference between subsidy/vanity publishing and self-publishing ( 2-3 minutes)
    Well, in short a subsidy publishing or vanity publishing is when a publishing company applies or uses THEIR ISBN number(s) for your book.  They will then charge you the author for all costs involved in the production.  For that you then will receive a few copies of your book and are promised royalties on the books that THEY sell.  These royalties can range anywhere from 5% to 16% of the retail price of your book.  

    That might sound like a good option for some, but for others it might throw up a red flag.  The key thing to remember is that THEY own the ISBN and THE rights to your book.  They are then responsible for selling your books.  All you have to do is sit back and wait for that check to maybe come in the mail.  On the other hand, what is motivating them to sell your books?  They have already made their money with the thousands of dollars that you sent them in the initial stages of the process.  Again, if they sell 100 books at $14.95 totaling around $1,500 you are only going to be making at most $250 bucks from that.  

    This is where Self Publishing comes in to play.  With self publishing you have total control of the entire process.  You can decide what goes on the book cover, you can decide if you want to have your book edited(which you should), you can determine how many copies of the book you would like to print, and finally you control how many books that you sell.  With all of that you are going to receive pretty much 80% of the profits.  So for those same 100 books that the traditional publisher sold, if you would have self-published and sold them yourself instead of making $250 bucks you would be making around $1,200 bucks.  That's a big difference.  Now don't get me wrong, it is not going to be an easy road, but with all great accomplishments comes hard work.  But this way your hard work pays off.

    So now that we have the general difference between subsidy/vanity publishing and self publishing lets talk about how to get started down the self-publishing road.

How to self publish
    This might sound strange to you and it may seem a little out of order for most. But the first thing that you want to do before anything in the self publishing process is to obtain your website domain name.  You do not need to develop a website yet, you simply need to purchase your domain name.  

    The reason for this is because you want to have the same domain name as your book title and your publishing company name.  You do not want to start  Johnson's publishing company, and then find out, after you went through the entire process of publishing your book, that www.johnsonspublishing.com is a competitor of yours.  That means all the marketing you will be doing for your company can, by chance, be benefiting them.  The same instance can apply to the title of your book.  If you write a book called the big red ball, you want to make sure that thebigredball.com is your domain name and not someone else's.

    After you have your domain name, you have your manuscript that is ready to be turned into a book.  Next question you need to ask yourself is do I need to get my manuscript edited?  The answer to that question should always be YES.  Even though you might think you are an excellent writer, and by all means you more than likely are, you really need to have a professional read though your work and make suggestions.  At selfpublishing.com we offer an editorial analysis for only $149, and with that you will get a professional editor to read your work and give you their honest opinion.  They may or may not suggest that your book will need to be copy edited.  If your book does need to be copy edited then we also offer 3 levels of copy editing.  The best part is is that we will apply that $149 that you already spent to any level of copy editing.

    Now that you have your manuscript edited and it is exactly the way you want it, it is on to the book cover design and the book layout.  Many think that this is a place where they can do it themselves, and for some it might work.  But the majority of the of people are going to need a professional graphic designer to complete this task for them.  For a note, you would not go and build a house from the ground up, spend the time putting in all new appliances and a granite counter top and then have your uncle's best friends brother who is pretty handy with hammer try to put on a gorgeous wrap around front porch.  You want to make sure that it is done right and will withstand the years of use and be able to weather the elements.  The same thing goes for your book cover.  That is the first thing people see and for some books, it is the last.  On average you have about 5 - 15 seconds for a potential customer to either look at your cover and want to buy it, or look at your cover and put it right back down on the shelve.  So having your book cover and book layout done by a professional is a must.

    Okay, so now you have 2 PDFs that are ready to go to the printer.  You cover design is perfect and the interior of your book looks great.  You now want to find a printer that will do justice to your book.  A bad printer or bad print run can do just as much harm for your book as a bad cover design or layout.  Have you ever seen a book where the inside of the book was hard to read, where the text was bleeding together or maybe the inside copy was not perfectly straight.  Or how about a cover that is too dark or muted or all of the colors are running together.  That is just as much the printers fault as it is the designers fault.  You need to know that the PDF that you receive from your designer will be pretty close to what you should receive from the printer, BUT it is not going to be exact.  The colors may not be dead on but they should be pretty close.  
    The reason for this is because your computer screen is displayed to you by using 3 color spectrums of light, Red Green and Blue.  That is where the acronym RGB comes from.  When the printer prints your book that are printing it using 4 ink colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black or CMYK.  That variation of 3 color vs 4 color means slight variations in what you see on your screen and what the printer delivers to you.  
    When shopping around for printing quotes you want to make sure that you are comparing apples to apples and not apples to oranges.  Many printers offer many different types of printing.  You want to make sure you are quoting the same 50# White Offset on a 5.5 x 8.5 at 1500 copies for each of the printers.  The slightest change such as using  60# paper or 45# paper can cause a big difference in price.
    You should start out by going to selfpublishing.com and viewing our online printing quotes section.  You give us your trim size, your page count, and how many books you want, and we will give you an exact quote for each book INSTANTLY.  Going through selfpublishing.com will more than likely be cheaper than going directly to the printer yourself.  
    The main thing that printers want to do is print books.  They do not want to pre flight, trouble shoot, or in all honesty talk to the customers.  The just want to print.  At selfpublishing.com we do just that at.  We give the printer perfect files so all they have to do is print.  We handle the pre flight, we deal directly with the customers, and we trouble shoot.  With that we are offered a better rate for printing your book than if you would go directly to them. That intern means that you get a better price too.  At booksjustbooks and selfpublishing.com we have over 105 million books in print, we make the printer happy, and we make the customer happy.  It is as simple as that.

    So with your books in hand, you are now ready for the last and final step of the self publishing process.  This is the step that can either make or break you.  By this time you are probably mentally drained and thinking whew  its over, I have self published my book and I can sit back and take a break.  Well, don't give up or take a break now.  It is now time to start selling books.  
    For most people the reason for self-publishing a book is to sell books and to make money.  You will need to do some hard work here but it will be worth it.  You first need to get yourself a website using the domain names that you purchased in the beginning of the process.  With your website you will be able to advertise your book and sell your book 24 hours a day 7 days a week to people all over the world.  
    You also want to get promotional materials made up such as book marks, post cards, business cards etc.  They all need to have your website address on there.  You can not brand your website or domain name enough, that is why it is very important to obtain the correct domain name in the beginning.  
    Selfpublishing.com also offers a distribution and fulfillment program called THOR.  With THOR you are able to get your books into Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Baker and Taylor, Ingram and most of the major online bookstore chains.  This will also get you into the brick and mortar store databases.  It will not put your book on the shelve of Barnes and Noble, but if someone walks to the help desk and asks for the title of you book, they will say "We do not have this book here in the store but you can order it and have it shipped to you in a couple of days."  The basic program starts at only $49.95 per year plus $19.95 per year for storage.
    After you have your website and you are enrolled in THOR you should really pick up a book called 1001 ways to market your book by John Kremer.  This book has excellent strategies for marketing your book, many of which you may have never thought about, You can also take a look at a book called Beyond the Bookstore by Brian Jud which goes in to detail about marketing your book to a non bookstore market.  Bookstores are really only 30% of the places where people buy books.  You have the supermarket, the newsstand, the local coffee shop, all kinds of places. There are many other places to market you book to besides the bookstore.

Closing
So in closing Selfpublishing.com is like the Home Depot for the author.  We bring all of the resources that an author would need under one roof.  We offer editorial, design, book printing, and distribution and marketing service.  We do not do the work for you but simply give you the necessary tools and knowledge  to get the job done at an affordable price.  All of our services are al la cart, meaning you can purchase 1 service, all of the services, or not purchase anything.  That is all up to you.  Are largest goal is to educate you the author to be as informed as possible about the decisions you are going to be making.