Publishing Directions

Is it just the tip of the iceberg?

What is POD/PODG?

In 2012,  I attended a seminar called “Print On Demand; Publish on Demand”. The topic was how anyone can become a publisher.  I caught public transport  to a hotel in the city and spent the whole day there with like-minded people.  There were editors, writers, and marketing people, trying to comprehend the latest trends in the publishing field.  At first I thought it sounded like the same old “you pay us and we’ll publish your book” self-publishing marketing stuff that’s been around for years.  Or that it referred uniquely to eBooks. But no, this was different, hard to get my head around at first, but finally inspiring.

Ingram was the umbrella company represented there, and Lightning Source Australia POD was their Melbourne-based facility.  Nerida Fearnley, the Senior Content Acquisition Account Executive opened the seminar. Lightning Source are distributors, and their goal is to “help content reach its destination,” and they offer a one-stop-shop solution to all publishers in terms of their printing and distribution needs.”

The American head of one of the publishing companies  “put the material on the train tracks”. He was CEO of the publishing firm Strategic Book Publishing, which is a division of Publish on Demand Global. In his own words: “We’re publishers; we route into Ingram.” They are sourcing books into India and China. He presented the second half of the seminar and fielded questions from participants.

The main value of this seminar for me was that it showed me a pathway towards publication, without the need for an agent or a traditional publisher. It gave me impetus to get back to the task of writing those novels and to finish them. It also provided me with a networking group for exchange of cards. And put me on the right track towards the next step in the process.

A Self Publishing Experience

After much research of possible publishers for our Writers Group Anthology, we settled on an Australian small press willing to bring our collection of short stories and poems to life in book form.

Self publishing was the obvious way to go, since traditional publishers are rarely interested in short story collections, unless they are linked to well-known and established authors.

Why did we want to have this anthology published in book form, since it was already published online, and had already received favourable reviews? So that members of our Writers’ Group could add this to their publishing credentials and because, like many, we still loved the look and feel of a book, despite the move towards e-technology.

The reason we chose Publicious was because they offered a concise package within our price range of $1,000, and this included colour photos, an additional aesthetic aspect of the collection. They had also had experience publishing material from other writers’ groups.

My attendance at the seminar “Publish-On-Demand” led to my finding the link to this Australian digital publisher. Most of the publishers listed on the handouts from this conference were American, however one Australian publisher was mentioned, which seemed to be the obvious way to go. I am grateful to the organisers of this seminar for leading me to this outcome. We had our 50 copies of the book before Christmas. What a fantastic end-of-the-year reward!

A Digital Event

In 2012  I was able to inform my brother, who was living on a remote farm in the Isère in France, about self publishing options.  He published an excellent first genealogy book, A Little Bit of Irish, on our mother’s family tree, in 2013.  Then, a year later, he received a first copy (from the printer in the UK) of They Sought the Last of land , about our father’s side, which can be thought of as a companion volume to A Little Bit of Irish. He is more than satisfied with the results.  See his blog Antipodes at http://skyvington.blogspot.com.au.

I would recommend anyone who is interested in researching their family history to look at these books. The writer (author and publisher William Skyvington: Gamone Press) is meticulous about researching the past and getting things right. They are templates for excellence in genealogy. And I’m not biased.

The Big Stakeholders

Digital Publishing includes both e-Books  published via internet companies such as Lulu-com, Smashwords and Bookauthor.com, as well as Published on Demand e-books and traditional books through companies such as Ingram and Macmillan Digital. It’s a quicker way of publishing than the traditional model, and  writers can bypass an agent if they wish. Editors, of course, are even more necessary than before, at least if writers want to produce top quality books for the market. It’s also a lot cheaper for the individual publisher/writer, at least for a short run.

Of the three big stakeholders of Amazon, Google and Apple, Amazon was a quick mover, attracting a large share of the market.  Apple  only published e-Books, and Google was the “sleeper”, waiting to step in at the right moment, perhaps.

I visited a store in my shopping centre a few years ago where all books were priced at $5 each. This seemed a sure sign of things to come. Many bookstores were going online to sell their wares. However, recently I have noticed a friendly new bookstore chain, Harry Hartog, that has recently opened in our Bondi Junction shopping centre.  And there’s “Gertrude and Alice” at Bondi Beach, where you can relax, eat and drink,  browse, and feel like you’re at home . A couple of these cafe bookstores have opened recently in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, so all is not lost yet for lovers of paper books you can hold in your hands.

Change is always difficult for some people, and many readers still prefer to hold a book in hand. However, the move towards digital can only go on increasing with time. Perhaps precious books will become the preserve of bookshops in the future. In any case, it is better to move with the times than to dig yourself into a corner with nowhere else to move. So I say embrace the changes, but still enjoy holding books in your hands too, for there will always be books around for those who don’t want digital.

Indie Authors

True self-publishing involves authors becoming the publishers of their own books, without mediation from publishing companies of any sort, whether vanity, digital or traditional.  The advantage of this approach is that authors receive a larger percentage of the royalties from the sale of their books. The possible disadvantage is that the author must take on the role of marketing and publicising the books.

Trends in 2016

See the excellent article by Erika Liodice on my favourite writers’ site: Writer Unboxed,  February 13, 2016: “Unbound: Digital Publishing Round-Up” Winter Edition. I especially like Amazon’s quality control initiatives in relation to e-book uploads:  “Ebook authors and publishers who ignore quality issue warnings at the time of publishing on Kindle Direct Publishing now face the reality that readers will be warned that their ebooks are sub-standard.”  Bravo Amazon! Source: Unbound: Digital Publishing Round-Up Winter Edition

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