Publishing

I thought I’d answer a few of the questions I’ve gotten from people who’ve seen my videos on expertvillage.com (see the link above to watch the videos) about self-publishing children’s books.

Question: How do you know if you should use Print on Demand or hire a professional printing press for your self-published book?

Just to start with, there’s the basic definition of “publishing” which is not always the same as “printing,” since you can publish to the web (like I’m doing now on my blog, or there are e-books…); and then of course there’s a wide definition of printing, too. You can print from your own printer, print on demand, or hire your own 4-color (or 6-color–yummm) printing press company or “get” published.

One thing it’s helpful to consider before publishing, and even before or as you’re writing, is your reader. Who are they and where are they to be found? The more specific you can be with this, the easier your whole process of writing and publishing will be; you’ll be headed in a specific direction.

I’ll use Petalwink as an example. Whit and I knew who the book series Good Things Come on Tiny Wings: The Adventures of Petalwink the Fairy(R) was for: girls 3-8 who were being read to or just learning to read and whose parents appreciated a “wholesome” story line (Of course every author would like to think that THEIR story is universal and “everyone” will like it. You can hold onto that hope, but try reaching “everyone” when it comes to publishing and marketing). Even with defining our readers as girls 3-8, it’s a pretty broad market (you can go online and research statistics about your “ideal reader”). So we further narrowed it down to girls 3-8 who are interested in imagination & play and self-esteem. And where are those girls to be found? School, of course (or home school)! So we needed to bear educators in mind, as well as parents (you can consider them “gatekeepers”).

Since I also illustrated the book, I had a specific audience in mind for the illustrations, as well. When I was little, I always wanted to rip out my favorite illustrations and pin them to my wall so I could look at them all the time (not surprisingly, I’ve made my living as a mural artist for fourteen years!). Having a vision for how the illustrations and story would be inextricably linked helped us decide *how* we would publish. Since the book needed to be a certain size (Petalwink Learns to Fly is an “odd” size at 9″ x 13.5″, tall and skinny, even though Petalwink is tiny, the book is proportionate to Petalwink’s lanky skinny fairy frame), the printing of the colors needed to be excellent so that you felt as though you were looking at the original watercolors, we knew we needed to have it professionally printed, and not printed on demand (where we could not proof or guarantee the quality and at the time there were very few size choices).

A word now about “print on demand” or POD. There are several websites that offer this service. Most of them become your printer AND your publisher in that they will help you market your book…for a price. You upload your text and/or illustrations to their server, and they have several standard sizes to choose from, and then you can order from them as few or as many books as you’d like. It’s less expensive the more you order, but you’ll still be paying a lot more per book than hiring a traditional printing press company to do it (assuming you print 1,000 or more). POD is a great way to go to get started, but you must read the fine print about how much $ they take from your sales (if people buy your book directly from their site) and how much, if any (hopefully none!) of your intellectual property they get a stake in.

When we found our printer (in Canada), they were a perfect fit because we could have whatever size or whatever format, kind of cover, paper, etc. we wanted. Since we ordered 3,000 books, we also rented warehouse space instead of trying to store and sell from our garage! The warehouse we rented also does fulfillment services, so when we sell books from our website or take large orders from retailers, the warehouse packages the order and ships them out.
As you can see, we are responsible for the fulfillment and marketing of our books when we hired a traditional printing press. We also had to pay for all the books up front! But for our purposes–publishing the first in a series of books that are the staple in a lifestyle brand and using the first book as a test for marketing and to get an initial reader following and sales track record–the traditional printing was the way to go.

Now we are free to take our book to publishers as a sample (more on this in another blog), or go build other partnerships with lots of sales and reader feedback in our portfolio!