PublisherTalk

Taking your first steps to be a self-publishing author can be quite a bit of work. In an effort to improve our service model, we constructed a questionnaire in order to reach out and get a feel from our veteran clients' experiences. The answers we received were not only well written but very insightful. Thankfully, we learned that book publishing was a positive experience for you, with over 98.3% of you responding that you were happy that you published your books. We're glad to hear it and promise to strive to ensure your continued happiness by strengthening our services and listening to your concerns, requests and ideas.

Book Printing
From the responses received, we were astonished with the large quantity of initial book printing runs. 29.9% indicated that their initial print run was over 1,000 books and the average number of books sold was 2,500. Two of our clients indicated that they have sold more than 40,000 books each!

Note: Only 59% of respondents indicated they planned on providing their publication as an ebook.

Key Concern: Marketing
One of the important things we've learned from you is your method for selling. Most of you answered that selling direct to customers is your most effective method; local bookstores coming in a distant second. This might be directly influenced by your promotion methods which included hosting local events and book signings as means of generating interest in your writing. In fact more than 71% of you rely on local events/book signings to sell your publications.
Based on your comments, we found that marketing your book was the most prevalent concern.

Challenges and Lessons Learned


“The biggest hurdle is being taken seriously by the big box book stores.”
“Formatting -- I'm still learning tricks of the trade.”
“The personal financial burden.”
“There are many more aspects to publishing than I ever imagined, many things to learn about the business. Without assistance I would still be struggling (my husband did the book design/layout, I hired an editor and illustrator, and my brother-in-law did photography.”
“Getting the right cover was a challenge when dealing with someone far away. Marketing is always a challenge, as is getting the book into bookstores.”
“It's all about getting the book out there to people --Promotion is key and expensive”
“Proofing. Spell check doesn't sea normal words used incorrectly.”
“Once the process of publishing prep, and printing ar mastered, MARKETING is the continuing biggest challenge”
“Difficult to find adequate time to do marketing.”
“As a first time self publisher everything was challenging.”
“Distribution”
“Formatting beyond basic Word document (PDF, etc.)”
“Editing a book is always a challenge. Several people need to go through the book to make sure all errors are noted.”
“Proofing and layout design. Proofing took almost a month. had to hire a person to do it. The design aspectc changed with the software that I was using.”
“Distribution of book”
“Printing and proof reading”

Suggestions
It has always been one of our goals to create a community of independent self publishers who can share experiences and ideas.

Click here to view suggestions from veteran publishers from our survey.

We would like to thank everyone who participated in the survey. If you have any additional comments, please send them to pubserv@barcode-us.com

Global Book Distribution is Coming Soon...

Publisher Services has now provided ISBN assistance and/or book printing to over 12,000 self publishers. We appreciate your business and strive help make your publishing business grow. Bar Code Graphics (the parent company of Publisher Services) is working with Ingram to provide an economical global distribution channel for our clients without disrupting their existing direct to consumer sales.

Posted in: customers, distribution, printing, survey on Wednesday, October 21, 2009 at at 8:09 AM