How much does it cost to self publish a book – Part 3 – The Professional – There is very little difference between the costs and preparation of the professional self-publisher and the serious hobbyist. It’s more of the realization that as a “pro”, publishing has now become your full time income rather than a part time hobby

Professional self publishers become “professionals” either by chance or by choice. The professional and serious hobbyists are similar in that they both want to make money from their publishing venture. The main difference between the two is the professional relies on publishing as their main means of support, where the serious hobbyist uses it as a supplement. Many professional self publishers start out as serious hobbyists. Often what will happen is an author will achieve a reasonable amount of success with a first title and try a second, and a third. Before you know it, enough income is being realized that they decide to get into publishing on a full time basis.

Somewhere between seeing their name in print for the first time and making the decision to go “pro”, the author turned publisher learns that publishing is a complicated business in which long term successes are rare. Much like most other businesses, education and hard work, along with a little luck are key ingredients to success. You can’t be successful, in the long run, without all three of these..

Many authors turned “pro” have short term success with only one or two of these ingredients, especially luck. I was a perfect example of this. About 25 years ago, a buddy of mine and I invented a game (not exactly a book but it will do for the example). Because of the timely political nature of the game, what started as a lark quickly grew to the point when we were on dozens of TV and radio shows and were written up in hundreds of newspapers. We sold tens of thousands of games as a result of the publicity. We were both broke when we started, so it was easy taking on our new role of professional publishers. The phones kept ringing, the game kept flying out the door and the money kept rolling in. It wasn’t long before we started reading our own press clippings and convinced ourselves we knew what we were doing. My partner’s wife correctly referred to us as a couple of “big cheeses”. While things were going well we never bothered to learn anything about the business. We made our own rules and convinced ourselves we knew what we were doing. What’s the saying, “all good things must come to an end”? A year and half after the sale of our first game the sale of the last game occurred. While luck and a certain amount of hard work had carried us for a while, the lack of education of the publishing business is what ultimately put us out of business.

The same thing that happened to me happens daily to others like me. These types are often referred to as “one book wonders”. No matter how hot the title or product, there is a day when the demand dies and if there is not a sufficient backup plan you’re out of business.

A good example of an author who resisted being impressed with himself in the sales of his first book and went on to build a “brand” is Relentless Aaron. Being in the unfortunate position of having a lot of time on his hands while serving a prison sentence, Aaron resisted getting caught up in all the normal nonsense associated with being incarcerated and started writing. He started with songs, and then poems and then books. He worked on his writing skills until he was absolutely sure he had a good product. Upon release Aaron printed a few hundred copies of his first book and sold them one by one on the street and bought a few hundred more and sold them. He repeated this many times, each time investing the money earned into more books. Relelentless Aaron has gone on to become a true legend of self publishing. He has published over 20 books, has picked up a nice book deal from St Martin Press yet still is out selling and promoting every day. If any of you need a little inspiration about what it takes to be a successful self-publisher you should visit Relentless at http://www.relentlessaaron.com/.

But what about costs? Isn’t that what this article was supposed to be all about? Like I said in the first sentence, the costs are similar between the serious hobbyist and the pro. If you want to review the costs of serious book publishing visit (Serious Hobbyist Costs) The main difference is that the “pro” needs to have a plan in place to prove to that they can actually earn a living from publishing. This “Plan” could be as easy as my friend “Blue” who has been earning a living selling his books in the streets and subways of New York for the better part of ten years. His business plan is easy. Get up early, work real hard in all kinds of conditions and sell enough books to pay the bills and put food on the table. POD has no place in this type of publishing. If you are going to earn a living selling books, you need books and enough faith in yourself that you can sell them. While budget might dictate a short digital run to get started, the profit is in the numbers. The same $6 POD book costs around a dollar if bought in sufficient quantities. If you are selling at a retail price of $10-$15 you can see the obvious difference.

Your “plan” will vary with your own particular circumstances. It’s a big jump from hobbyist to pro. Publishing is a tough business with an extremely high failure rate. Think twice before you quit your job or mortgage your house. If you are successful with your first title, maybe it’s time to try to market your second or third to a traditional publishing house. Don’t fall into the one book wonder trap like I did. If you like the business end of publishing and want to go further, learn more about it and do it right. Join some trade associations like SPAN and PMA. Attend some seminars. Talk to others who are publishing for a living. If marketing is not your strength, get some professional help. You don’t need to spend huge sums of money on this either. My personal favorites are my regular columnists, Fern Reis or Brian Jud.. There are plenty of others out there as well. Just watch yourself. There is no one person who is going to guarantee that you will be successful. In the end, it’s up to you.

How much does is cost to be a professional publisher? There is no set amount and it’s actually not that important. What is important is that if you are considering this, that you be committed to educating yourself to the business and be willing to invest the time and make every effort necessary to make your publishing business a success. It’s totally up to you.

Last 5 posts by Ron Pramschufer

• What do you think about Amazon’s announcement that small publishers need to print with their printer in order to be listed on Amazon? - April 17th, 2008
• What are the steps are involved in Self-Publishing a book? - March 24th, 2008
• Do you know any good book printers? - February 11th, 2008
• What do you think of Facebook as a marketing tool for self-published books? - December 5th, 2007
• Did you change your mind about authors buying a single ISBN? - October 22nd, 2007