9.   NEW RELEASES

  10.  COMING SOON

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  AUTHORS, GET PUBLISHED!

  Llumina Press publishes “e” and print-on-demand

  books, and pays higher royalties—60% on ebooks,

  and 30% on Trade Paperbacks.  Check us out at:

  http://www.llumina.com/  We’re giving 

  self-publishing a good name…

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  A Note From the Publisher

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A Brief History of Publishing

By Deborah Greenspan 

There are about 20 large publishers still in business, and they run the show.  They decide what the public wants to read, and they never consult the public on those decisions.  Mostly, they're looking for bestsellers and have pretty much set the midlist adrift.  It costs too much to market a book for it to be worth it to them to bother.  So what gets out there?  Stories about celebrities and politicians, stories by writers who have already proven their ability to sell.  That's why the John Grishams and James Redfields are ignored until they sell 100,000 copies by themselves.  Publishers only want saleable works. 

So where does that leave the thousands of unknown writers and would-be writers out there?  On their own.  Some become self publishers and take on the full responsibility for getting their book into print; others look for some kind of publisher to assist them. In fact, there are so many ways to go about it, it's amazing that people have narrowed the whole field down to a few "types" of publishers, such as vanity, subsidy, co-op, POD and so forth.  The fact is, wherever there are people with a need there are people who will set out to satisfy that need...for a price.  That's capitalism.  And we don't have much choice but to live with it.  Some people take this to mean that they have carte blanche to take a person's money and give as little as possible for it; they think it means they can fiddle with the truth and exaggerate what they'll do to help the person; they think it means they can take advantage of people.  These people exist in every field, and as somebody once said, "There's a sucker born every minute" (for the greedy to feed on). Or if that's seems offensive, then how about, "Let the buyer beware."  We've heard it all before, and it's a sad story of greed that usually ends of badly for everyone involved.  However, despite the fact that there are many unethical people out there, in the publishing field and out of it, there are also many who are ethical, who do care that they deliver what they say they'll deliver and who care that they do the best job of which they're capable for the people who trusted them with their money and their work. 

In the early 1900s, the term "vanity press" was coined by the much-smaller-than-it-is-now publishing industry to stop other wealthy people from competing with them.  At the beginning of the 20th century, the market was wide open.  A writer with a good book  and a lump of money didn't encounter the kind of competition there is today.  By making people think that any writer who didn't go through the gatekeepers of the publishing industry were egotists and amateurs, publishers effectively shut out independent competition and forced writers to compete for their services.  It was what most people would consider a smart business move.  But in the long term, where has it gotten us?  Now we live with the results of eliminating competition--a market that's flooded with books whose only reason for existence is to make money for the publishers.  I mean, really, who cares to read a book about the life of one more Hollywood or political whore?  People want books about people; books that are real; books that touch them where they live.  We're bored with the same old same old.  And if some of us are not as yet, believe me, the time will come. 

And then along comes POD, a new technology, a way to print books one at a time, a way that enables people with very little money to get their books into print.  And into the space created by this new technology rush the writers who have until now been ignored and spurned by the big NY publishers.  Contributors to the infamous "slush pile," these writers are ready to spend their money on getting published, and they don't care if the POD publishers are taking advantage of them.  They don't care if their book ever sells.  All they care about, at first, is holding their book in their hands, showing the people they know that they are real writers.  And the POD publishers are going for it, printing books by the tens of thousands, one at a time.  And because it's all new, there's no one to point out the pitfalls. 

I went into this business as a writer looking for a way to get my own works published.  Having enjoyed enough success as a freelance writer to assure myself that I could write, I decided to stop waiting for the magic call from a major publisher and get my books out there myself.  Investigating the field in minute detail, I quickly narrowed in on POD, not because I thought it was better than any other type of assisted self-publishing, but because I thought I could afford it.  But then as I am by nature a difficult person to sell to, I got into the nitty gritty of POD.  And I discovered it had some glaring holes.  First of all, POD publishers did not care what was between the pages of my, or anyone else's, book.  They would print anything.  As a professional writer with the degrees to prove it, I wasn't about to put my name under the same imprint that carried books written by people who could barely structure a sentence, books that were littered with grammatical errors.  So right there, I eliminated every POD I could find, as I could see that all they wanted to do was print books.  They could not even differentiate between one that was well written and one that was not. 

As I thought about it, I realized that I could publish books myself, and not just mine.  I had the skills.  I am an artist as well as a writer and editor, and I could create the cover, format the text, put together a web site, and if nothing else, I could do research and follow directions to learn anything else I needed to know.  There was a lot I needed to learn--like how to set up a shopping cart and what was distibution.  For weeks I pulled my hair out, but eventually I got it figured out.  At this point I began by publishing one of my own books, and soon I was publishing the works of many writers, always maintaining a high editorial standard.  My plan was to grow and build a reputation for quality books that would make it possible for POD to get beyond the web and actually enter the bookstore. 

While all PODs could claim Ingram distribution ( and many allowed writers to think that meant they were going to get their books into bookstores), I soon realized there were a few flaws in the model created by Ingram.  The flaws were these:  1) Most regular publishers would take returns on their books.  This meant bookstores actually took little or no risk when introducing a new writer or book.  How could POD, which was only printed when there was an order and took no returns, compete with that?  2) POD books cost more to produce.  Well come on now, that one should be obvious.  How can a book that is printed in a run of 100,000 not cost less than a book that is printed one at a time?  3) Ingram would almost never print more than one or two copies to keep in their warehouse and this meant although the books were "available on the Ingram database" the quantities were so limited that bookstore chains weren't even permitted to order them.   

It took a long time to learn about these limitations because no one was out there talking about it.  No one on the inside wanted to let the cat out of the bag, and no one on the outside had a clue.  When I first found out about the returnability, I got very depressed.  I worried that I was being misled and that I was in turn misleading the authors who came to me for help.  Then I got angry and started looking for a way to remedy the situation.  The result was that we were the first to introduce Returnability through Ingram as a POD option.  And by default this cleared up the availability problem as well because it turned out that Ingram will print more than one or two copies if the books are returnable. 

All that can be done about keeping the price down is to keep the book large (6x9), with small type and small margins.  At times, when there's no other way (for instance, on hardcovers), we may lower the distributor discount.  Although there are many POD publishers who do this as a matter of course, and even push the discount so low that a bookseller would only make a 10% profit if they were to buy the book, we never go lower than 40%.  We want the retail price to be competitive and we want the bookseller to make a decent profit, so we walk a tightrope, keeping our own percentages lower than most and keeping our eyes on the long term instead of the short.  We want to sell books, and we know that that's the only real way to make money in publishing.  POD, vanity, subsidy, whatever.  It doesn't matter what you call it.  Just make sure your publisher is ethical and plans to make money in book sales.