As I mentioned in my introduction, self-publishing used to mean handing over your manuscript to a printing company and ordering a set number of copies, often in the thousands, which they would print for you in return for a large fee. You would then be lumbered with these boxfuls of books which you would have to hawk round to your sales outlets of choice. Nowadays, this couldn’t be further from the truth. The advent of print-on-demand (POD) technology has enabled authors to order as many or as few books as they want to and come back for more if they wish, thus negating much of the risk associated with self-publishing and reducing the initial outlay to only that of how many books they wish to order – which can be as little as one.

In stark contrast to years gone by, a huge amount of the self-publishing process is done virtually, utilising the internet and its capabilities to ever developing extents. There are growing numbers of self-publishing companies operating online (some naturally better than others) offering various services at various payment levels. These generally fall into two categories – basic services and package services – which are explained below.

Basic services

These organisations require you to play author, editor and cover designer but operate at a greatly reduced cost. The process of getting your work ready to print is incredibly quick and simple, requiring you to simply choose your desired book size and layout from the templates provided, upload your text file (Word, PDF etc.) and design your cover (or upload a pre-made cover). All this is usually free, with the cost normally coming only from the printing of the books themselves. You then order as many books as you want and wait for them to arrive. The advantages of this system are its flexibility, complete editorial and design control and the lower cost of the final project. It relies totally however on the  competency of author – if your cover stinks, if the text is badly formatted or if you have accidentally uploaded your shopping list instead of your book they won’t tell you (although you can review the contents at any stage so you will spot any errors of this magnitude). In short, they follow that old computing term ‘garbage in, garbage out’. They also won’t offer any marketing advice, although some are beginning to offer these services for a further fee. Basic services are for those who are confident in the shape and state of their manuscript, can design a decent cover and have some marketing nous in order to get the book out there and get interest up.

Package services

These services are different in that they charge an up-front fee ranging from the mid-hundreds to the low thousands, but in return you get a real publishing experience. Depending on the package you choose you can have your book read/edited by industry professionals, your cover professionally designed, press releases sent about your book’s release and copies available in national book chains such as Waterstones. As you can see it is a far fuller publishing experience, although there is no guarantee of course that your book will sell more copies through this method. Given the amount of work involved these projects can take months to complete as opposed to basic publishing which can be started and finished within hours, but the result is often a more professional work. I should state though that you have control over every aspect of the work – you call the shots at every stage, they just advise. The advantages to this style of self-publishing then are that you are given expert advice, the book will often look more professional (people will always judge a book by its cover) and you will have more of a reach to the public in terms of marketing. The downsides however are the upfront fee and lack of post-publication control.

Common ground

These services, different though their approaches are, have a number of things in common. Firstly, and most importantly, they will result in a very good quality book. Almost everyone I have shown my self-published novel University of Life to have believed it to be traditionally published, such is the quality of the cover, the paper and the layout of the text. Admittedly it took me a few goes to get it right (I used the basic service through Lulu so had to do it all myself), but it didn’t take more than a bit of leafing through the books on my bookshelf to see what I needed to do. Once I had it right the similarities were uncanny. I have seen a few books published through package services and they are even better. If there are any issues with the look, design and layout of a self-published book you can be sure that nine times out of ten it will be down to the author’s poor judgement or lack of research rather than publisher inadequacies. With POD technology improving year on year it is only a matter of time before traditionally published books are no different to look at that self-published ones, as long as the author knows what they are doing.

Another similarity is where your book appears for sale. Of course we all know that Amazon rules the internet and Waterstones rules the high street so your options are limited, but the good news is that, should you desire, your self-published effort can adorn both the virtual and physical shelves just like those of your favourite authors. Most decent basic services offer listing on Amazon, the iBookstore and other online bookshops (you will have an ISBN assigned to your book if you wish to do this – also often free), while for a fee you can extend this e-commerce distribution worldwide. Basic services do not, as far as I know, currently provide the placing of your book on the shelves of a bricks and mortar bookstore, but there is nothing to stop someone going into their local bookshop and asking to order a copy of your book, or you taking it to your local bookshop to see if they will stock it. Package services, depending of course on which package you buy, will offer all of the above with more options available the more you spend. However you do it, once you have spread the word about your forthcoming tome there will be no difference in the way most customers will order your book from the way they order Delia’s Christmas cookbook.

How customers buy

This process is far simpler than you might think and various from the traditional manner only slightly. Using the Delia Smith example, if someone orders her Christmas cookbook from Amazon the book is picked from the warehouse and sent to them. If a customer orders your book, a message is sent to the printer storing the electronic version from which the physical copy is printed and sent to the customer. It’s that easy – the book exists in its digital format ready to be printed as and when required, meaning that it doesn’t take up warehousing space and dramatically reduces costs to everyone involved. Similarly, if a customer goes into their local bookshop to order your book the vendor will find the ISBN number in the catalogue and order the book from there. If you're very lucky (or friendly with the bookshop manager) they may even allow you to put a couple of copies on their shelves, although remember that shelf space costs the bookshop money! I should also say here that some of the basic services also allow you to make amendments to your book even after you have given it the green light, say if someone points out a couple of serious typos. This is another advantage of self-publishing as opposed to traditional publishing where print runs are pretty much final.

Which is the best service for me?

This is a very difficult question to answer without taking into account numerous variables, such as your requirements, ambitions and financial limitations. Each service has various plus and minus points which carry different weights with different people, whilst companies within the two services all operate differently. I would suggest that you think carefully about what it is you want from your book (and your self-publishing company) and choose along those lines. In terms of the actual company you choose, I recommend this excellent (and frequently updated) self-publishing index which shows the most highly rated publishers. It may also be worth checking out the efforts produced by these publishing houses and comparing them, physically if possible (some international bookfairs, including London, have shelves of self-published books to browse through).

What is the self-publishing process?

As you may have guessed, there is no one answer to this. Well, actually there is – it depends on who you publish with. I won’t give as much information here as I do on the creation of eBooks because there are so many companies who work in such varied ways, but I’ll try my best to give you an overview of what happens.

I myself have only ever used basic services so I can only comment from that point of view, but some of my clients have used package services and speak very highly of them. The process used by package services essentially involves paying the fee, handing over your manuscript and then having a number of meetings with the various departments of the publishing house to get the thing pieced together. You’ll meet with the typesetters over the font, font size, layout, line spacing and chapter heading design; you’ll meet with the artistic team to come up with a cover (usually from a collection of stock photos or similar); and you’ll meet with the marketing team to discuss how you can advertise and market the book. I’m assured that it’s very much like the real thing and gives the author a real buzz and a feeling of being a professional author (albeit that you’re paying for the pleasure). You will receive a number of complimentary copies of your book, after which further copies will cost you. That’s about it. Your book goes live and you set about generating sales. Some reports I have heard have criticised these companies for their inflated prices, but the first of my clients who used them was very happy with the service, so I guess it’s buyer beware.

I’m more familiar with basic services, although again they all use their own methods. The principles are the same though. The first main difference is that the entire process is done online, which some will like and some won’t. You set up your account and upload your carefully edited and proofread book which, all being well, gets converted into the relevant format for that particular publisher. There are occasionally errors you won’t have considered, such as unembedded fonts and the like, but you’ll soon get the hang of it. Once the text is sorted you need to design your cover. Some companies offer free cover creation as part of their service, but I recommend designing something of better quality in Photoshop or an equivalent first and uploading this (or, better yet, hiring a cover designer to do one for you). Once your cover is sorted you need to set your price and stipulate where you want to sell your book. Most companies have Amazon as a default location, but further distribution is sometimes available in return for a small financial layout. With this set, all that remains is to review your project and then order your proof copy. Once the proof arrives you can tinker and repeat the process until you’re ready to sell. Then you give it the green light and get selling! You too can order as many or as few copies as you like, but they usually turn out to be much cheaper than those purchased through a package service.

Conclusions

As you can see there are various differences between the two self-publishing means, and it all depends on what you feel most comfortable with as to which method you choose. There is no out and out top dog and many follow the same procedures anyway, so it really is up to you to choose your direction. My advice is to do your own research and consider your individual needs, requirements and circumstances in order to make your decision.