Self-publishing is something of a misnomer. The process of taking
a book from first idea to a spot on someone’s bookshelf requires the help and
talents of many people. The work used to be done by huge publishing houses.
When you offer to self-publish, the responsibility for all the many tasks
involved falls squarely on your shoulders. But you are already the author, the editor-in-chief, and the business
owner. You cannot hope to sit isolated in your little home office and do
everything yourself, no matter how talented you may be. The success of your
book will depend upon how well you assemble a team of assistants. Here’s a look
at the staff I have assembled. Perhaps it will give you some ideas. My most important hire was my husband. Of course he was already on
board to give me moral support, but as time went on, he has taken upon himself
three important roles. First, he is my travel
agent. Second, he is my mail
clerk. He’s much better than I at packing and wrapping, and he never
seems to mind a quick trip to the post office. I can count on him to mail out
single book purchases or handle large book shipments. And third, he is my
official photographer. He also
comes with the advantage of being inexpensive. His salary is $1.00 a year,
augmented by clean laundry, home-cooked meals, and endless affection and
gratitude. My
business plan recognized that I would need to hire a design artist to create the book cover and a layout expert to make sure that the
final book meets the exacting standards of the publishing world—page numbers,
attractive fonts, spacing, chapter titles, and flourishes all in place. Since
both those areas are way beyond my expertise, I hire a design team through the production company who contracted to
produce the physical book. My covers and book trailers come from a cover
artist. A note here: Tax experts refer to these people as "contract labor. and yes, their services are business deductions. Many people are not trained to handle money efficiently. I
certainly wasn’t. My first lesson came when a friend of a friend bought a book
from me and handled me a check. When I looked at it the next day, I found that
she had made it out to Katzenhaus Books. I took it to the bank, only to have it
rejected. I couldn’t cash it because I didn’t have an account in the name of
Katzenhaus Books. I could either hunt the person down and ask them to write
another check (embarrassing!) or open a business account as Carolyn Schriber,
DBA (doing business as) Katzenhaus Books. Since there was a real possibility
that other checks would follow the same pattern, I went ahead and opened the
account. A good move, as it turned out, since the account came with an
associated credit card that lets me keep business purchases separated from
household purchases. It also provided safe direct deposits for royalty
payments. At about the same time, I realized that I needed to be able to
take book orders on my website, which in turn meant I needed to have a credit card manager. Despite what you
may have heard, most people trust PayPal to handle their credit card purchases.
The service they provide is the easiest—and the safest—way to handle such
charges. I’ve never had a PayPal charge that was not paid in full, and the
company is quite good about forwarding customer information. They charge only a
couple of percentage points on each transaction, and those are pennies well spent
in terms of convenience. Granted, occasionally I get a “phishing” attack on my
account, asking that I send in my bank account number, but since all such
requests are by definition fraudulent, there is no real danger of an account
being compromised. Further, PayPal is very good about tracking down the
perpetrators if you send them copies of any such e-mails. I use their services
constantly without problems. When Beyond
All Price began to make a lot of money —not a fortune, but more than I ever
expected—I sought more help with money management. A financial advisor helped clarify the best uses for unexpected
windfalls. He found flexible investment ideas that helped preserve the principle
while providing a way to start earning interest on the money. He also
introduced me to an absolute necessity—an accountant who could help me organize my records and deal with the
tax complications that come with self-employment taxes and irregular income
schedules. Somewhere along the line, I received an e-mail from a would-be
film maker, asking whether I had protected my film rights to the book and if
they were for sale. At that point, I had no idea. But I quickly learned that I
needed the advice of an intellectual property lawyer to guide me through the
intricacies of formal copyright registration and to prepare a simple options
contract that would guard against anyone snatching my story and profiting from
turning it into a movie without my knowledge. So there are the people I needed in order to “self-publish” a
single book. Even I am surprised at how many there are: travel agent, mail
clerk, photographer, design artist, layout expert, production company, printer,
web host, banker, credit card manager, financial advisor, accountant, and lawyer.
Each of them deserves partial credit for any success my book has achieved. If
you’re beginning this same process, start now to identify the staff that can
help you along the way. Portions of the above blog have been taken from my book, "The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese: How to Avoid the Traps of Self-Publishing," available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple iBooks, and Smashwords.com. |