About U.S. Book Publishing
and
PublishAmerica
(Page 2 of 3)
By Denny Hatch
Until very recently the printing of books has been dependent on the offset process where plates of are put on rollers and inked as huge sheets of paper are run through at high speed. These sheets are then cut, folded into pages, trimmed at the edges and then either case bound (hardcover) or perfect bound (paper). With traditional printing, the setup time is key. Once everything is in place and the press is running, it is really cheap to print additional books. It is like buying business cards. You can get 500 cards for $50 and an additional 500 cards for an additional $10. That is because the presses are set up and running.
A radical new printing process has been devised whereby books can be printed economically one at a time on a giant photocopy machine that requires little or no set-up time. Four elements are needed: (1) A cover printer; (2) a printer for text that uses toner rather than traditional ink; (2) a trimmer that makes the pages even; (4) a binder that marries the pages and the cover. A computer controls what text and what cover is printed. Two different titles can be printed in tandem.
PublishAmerica authors and staff visit the President of Iceland, Mr. Olafur Ragnar Grimsson at the President's house. Larry Clopper is third from the left. Willem Meiners is far right. Peggy Hatch is the sixth person to the right of President Grimsson in yellow. Denny Hatch is the bald guy to the left of Peggy.
A great many forces are at work trying to stop this extraordinary development (e.g., book printers, binders, paper companies-all of whom stand to lose a lot of business if the book publishing industry goes to POD (Print On Demand). What is more, the book trade stands to be turned on its ear if POD is widely accepted.
Yet in terms of inventory management, this is efficient. It saves money, saves trees, saves gasoline (books being transported to and from warehouses). Without question, this is the future of book publishing. As Dan Poynter says, "Print on Demand is not a way of printing; it's a way of doing business."
Until recently, the entire publishing industry looked down its collective nose at authors who published their own works. Self-publishing was given the pejorative sobriquet of "vanity publishing." Never mind that Rogers & Hammerstein and the Gershwins used to produce their own musicals, that a many actors and directors formed their own production companies to create their own films, or that politicians spend quantities of their own money to get themselves elected. For some reason a vanity author was (and is) considered slime.
Further, vanity publishers-who operated under the old offset printing model-tended to be terrible shysters. They would charge an author for the setup, for printing, for binding, and for storage-often with a 500-book minimum. A year later there might be 400 copies left in the warehouse, whereupon the publisher would write the author and say that unless the author wanted to buy these 400 copies, they would be turned into landfill. But the author had already bought and paid for the 400 copies! The publisher was going to charge double. Most authors did not know the difference, could not bear the thought of their work being trashed, and paid up.
Under the POD model, the scenario is very different, with the setup as little as $199 at iUniverse or $399 at 1st Books Library. This fee gets an author a cover design, pages, and entry into the book publishing sales channels. If editorial or promotional help is needed, the author pays extra.
However POD now has two meanings: (1) Print on Demand and (2) Publish on Demand. Print on Demand has been previously discussed. "Publish on Demand" means an author is paying to have a book published. POD (Print on Demand) is good; most traditional publishers are using it for back titles-printing as needed. POD (Publish on Demand) is held by many in the same low esteem that vanity publishing was years ago.
PublishAmerica is the brainchild of two disaffected entrepreneurs. One of the partners is Larry Clopper, a laid-back, bearded American who unsuccessfully tried to get two books published and became roundly disgusted with the publishing world. The second partner is an enormous, larger-than-life Dutchman named Willem Meiners who can speak with passion about books and publishing at one moment and can turn around and rip off a Bach fugue on a church organ or cocktail music on an old upright piano. Both Clopper and Meiners had a vision that they wanted to do something would enable unpublished authors to see their books in print. The ultimate result was PublishAmerica that took its credo from the old John Housman commercials for Smith Barney:
"We treat our authors the old fashioned way-we pay them."
Founded in 1999, PublishAmerica takes no money from authors with the exception that we can buy from them our books at a discount.
Otherwise, the principals are pathologically averse to taking cash from their authors-even to the point of refusing to sell or recommend publicity and promotion services-for fear of being labeled a Publish On Demand company.
PublishAmerica and PublishIslandica authors had a joint book signing at one of the leading bookstores in Reykjavik. Iceland publishes more books per capita - and has more book readers per capita - than any other country in the world. When a book signing is staged by the publicity department of a traditional publisher, chances are very good that books will not be at the venue. Every author at this PublishAmerica book signing had books available to sign. Larry Clopper and Willem Meiners made sure of that - going as far as to bring copies of just-publsiehd books with them on IcelandAir.
I am 68 years old. The priceline.com book is timely, what with the dot-com bubble bursting, Wall Street brokers and analysts getting censured all over the place, and highly questionable business ethics coming under the scrutiny of the press, the prosecutors, and the SEC. I wanted the book out now. If I had sent it around to every potential business publisher and allowed it to reside the their slush piles for three months at a clip, I would be dead before it was published. So when Publish America told me the book had been accepted, I went to the Website to see who they were and what they did. The featured book that day was 1001 Ways to Market Your Book by John Kremer. I knew Kremer to be a first rate book promotion guy and figured it PublishAmerica was okay for Kremer it was okay by me. I signed with PublishAmerica.
The contract I signed: I receive a $1 good faith advance. Standard royalties. Split 50-50 extra rights (books clubs, mass-market paperback, film, TV, etc.). PublishAmerica arranges for the ISBN# (the standard book identification number registered with the Library of Congress) and gets it listed on Amazon.com, BarnesAndNoble.com and all the other online book selling services. The company will also send the author two finished copies of his book. And that is basically that. All books are first published as trade paperbacks. If the title has legs, it might get hardcover treatment. The contract promises that book orders will be fulfilled-either by them or by the central book printing and fulfillment company, Ingram. Books that are ordered can be delivered within a week. And, oh yes, PublishAmerica will not take returns.
The author pays nothing to get published. However, the process of editing, copy editing and legal vetting (if necessary) are up to the author. In addition, publicity and promotion are up to the author, which sounds at first like a huge disadvantage compared to being published with a traditional publishing house. However, a publisher with 600 titles a year is able to give each title about half a day's worth of publicity. In actuality, each title gets much, much less, since the "big books" by the "star authors" (those in which the company has invested the most money) get the major attention by the publicity department. Any non-best-selling author gets back-of-the-hand, perfunctory treatment by publicity departments and had better figure on doing his or her own promotion or the book will die.
A first hand example was the case of my third novel, The Stork which got no reviews. In desperation I surveyed the major reviewers across the country who replied that they had never heard of the book and had never received a copy for review. It turned out that on the day the publicity department was to work on my book, a new publicity director took over. In the transition, none of the labels were generated and sent to the warehouse. I was devastated. Two years of my life were shot.
PublishAmerica does invite authors to send in a list of 100 friends and family each of whom will receive a letter announcing the book and tell the recipient how to order.
The result is that PublishAmerica is closing in on 5,000 titles in print and legion of proud, enthusiastic authors is running around the countryside busily promoting their books. Where traditional publishers have to sell 5,000, 10,000, and sometimes 15,000 of a title before they break even, PublishAmerica needs sales that are a tiny fraction of that amount.
Author queries are answered within two or three business days; manuscripts are evaluated and a go/no-go publishing decision is made within two weeks. Instead of making authors feel like dirt, PublishAmerica is in the business of making authors feel good about themselves, their work and their value on this planet.
Recently I received notice that PublishAmerica was starting a sister company in Iceland (PublishIcelandica) which has the highest per capita book readership in the world. To celebrate the launch, PublishAmerica authors were invited for a low-cost junket to Iceland. Included was to be an audience with the president of Iceland, a joint book signing at one of Iceland's leading bookstores, sightseeing tours, a swim in the world famous hot sulfur waters of the Blue Lagoon, airfare (IcelandAir), lodging, breakfast, dinners, luncheons and a seminar on publishing with Larry Clopper and Willem Meiners. About 16 authors-some with significant others-joined PublishAmerica staff. There were about 40 of us, and we all had a blast. As well as being a non-vanity book publisher, PublishAmerica has created a family of authors and seems to be making a profit.
Oh, yes. And unlike traditional book publishers, whose publicity departments schedule book signings and then forget to have books at the venue, all the books were there for us to sign.
The one hang-up to vast distribution of PublishAmerica titles is the no-returns policy. But the royalty statement from my last book from a traditional publisher stated sales of 2,400 copies and returns of 3,000. Not pretty.
My uncle was the highly successful 1930s screwball comedy writer Eric (My Man Godfrey) Hatch, who used to say, "Publishers love books; they love books so much they hate to part with them."
PublishAmerica loves to part with books.
It just doesn't want any back.
|
