Talk about trying to catch the train after it has left the station, the big publishing houses are just now looking into Internet and network marketing.  The Internet hit the publishing industry like a runaway freight and it wasn’t truly respected until upstarts like Amazon, and Google were seen riding off into the sunset lifting their glasses of champagne high into the air.

Even now Amazon is leading the book selling revolution with electronic books. What are the traditional guys doing? Mostly moaning about how book sales are down (is that true Amazon?), and gnashing their teeth about how foot traffic into bookstores has decreased.

This is why I say if you go the traditional route your chances of success are very slim.  I’ve read that a new title will get a whole 30 days of shelf exposure before being flung into the discount bin. Or even worse, having their covers ripped off for return credit and the book destroyed. You have to make a big splash early and fast to survive.

Chew on this thought–what if you published your own book and you could take the time it needs to build its audience? What if you controlled the presentation, marketing, and distribution? AND, instead of getting a 10% royalty earned fifteen times as much? This is the essence of self-publishing.

I’m not saying that everyone is ready, willing and able to do what it takes to be a self-publisher, but what most don’t know is that it is easier than you might imagine. You can build yourself up and become an industry thought leader in six months without even leaving home. Blogging makes it possible. The Internet makes almost anything possible. I know–I’m doing it. I started a blog last January (it’s July now) and I’ve had nearly 11,000 hits so far, and my monthly totals are going up, up, and up.

Why am I doing this? Exposure. Name recognition. I haven’t even published my books yet, but before I do I’m laying the groundwork. I’m networking and making world-wide connections daily. That’s so cool I can hardly stand it. If you scroll down the right side of my blog you will come to a yellow map of the world. Click on it and see how far and wide my words have gone.  I even have a language translator so that they can read what I’ve written in their own tongue. Technology–don’t ya’ love it?

Social Networking (web2.0) is flipping the whole book marketing system upside down. It used to be that you would sell books and then people would come to know you. Now people can get to know you and then you sell books. Which method would you rather use?

I’ve been following T.A.P. (The Author Platform) to learn the ropes of blogging and social networking.  Without this guidance I would be lost. TAP very clearly shows the path to follow and gives very valuable tidbits of information along the way. I can heartily endorse it because I use it. Oh, and by-the-way there’s a No Risk 15 day FREE trial too. What could be sweeter? Just click here for more information.

What do I get out of it? I get a little slice of the action, it’s true, but more than that I get the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve helped my fellow self-publishers, which is the same reason I have for creating The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors (click here for more information). I believe that we all benefit if we strive to raise the bar. We can do that by producing better self-published books, and selling them smarter than the big guys.

I, Bill Ruesch, have a confession to make. Although I’ve been in and around printing for some 35 years, book publishing is comparably new to me. You see, I did something that most Americans (somewhere around 80% wish they would do) I wrote a book. Actually I wrote four, one non-fiction, two poetry, and a novel, but that is beside the point. My novel would be my break through book. It  is a children’s fantasy story set in the fictional 1950′s small Florida town of Burns. It’s called The Whistlin’ Salamander. The thing is, I didn’t know what to do next.

Does that seem odd to you? I don’t mean to imply that I don’t know how to get a book printed. I could do that in my sleep. What I didn’t know was how to get it published. So, I turned to the Internet and bought several books on the subject.  I found tons of information on the business from landing an agent, to wooing a publisher. Publishers, for the most part, I was advised, won’t even look at a manuscript that hasn’t been presented by an agent, so I tried, and tried, to find an agent.

I learned about query letters. I came up with what I believed was a dandy, and made sure it was letter perfect. Agents, I read, have zero tolerance for grammar or spelling errors. I found out that different agents required different numbers of pages to sample your manuscript, and that I had to scrupulously follow every instruction or risk immediate rejection. I was very certain that they would love my letter and the submitted pages would be hailed. In my daydreams agents competed to sign me. That was the fantasy. The reality–not so much. Not only didn’t anyone bite, they didn’t even nibble.

What next, I thought?

Aha! An old friend Karen Christoffersen, I recalled, had worked with Richard Paul Evans author of the best-selling Christmas Box. Maybe Karen could help me. I called Karen and she told me that they were working on a program to teach self-publishers everything they needed to know through a practical hands-on method. At the completion, authors would receive fifty copies of their bookstore-worthy book printed, designed, edited, and proofread. That sounded like a good idea, but I already knew how to get all of the production things done. What I needed to know was how to sell my book. The great-agent-chase convinced me that traditional publishing wasn’t ready for me yet.

Karen introduced me to Phil Davis the owner of ZDocs a digital printing company specializing in short-run books. Phil, being the savvy entrepreneur that he is, had created a course to teach authors how to use the Internet to establish or increase credibility, and to sell books. He named the course T.A.P.The Author Platform. I told Phil about my quandary and he gracefully allowed me to study TAP with the proviso that I would report back to him anything I didn’t understand. Hey, I could do that. Through The Author Platform I learned the importance of creating a blog. Viola, that’s what you are reading now. I learned about social networking and you can find me on Facebook , Linkedin and Twitter, I found out that through social networking you can reach thousands of people with your sales message in less time than it takes for one person to walk into a bookstore, pickup your book, and look at the jacket.

I’ve been practicing the principles Phil teaches in TAP.  I now know that self-promotional activities are challenging. They take time, they take energy, and they require all of your creativity. How well does it work? In just a few months I’ve become connected with amazing people all over the world that I could never have met in 10 lifetimes otherwise. My network gets stronger everyday. The more I learn the more I realize there must be thousands of people in the same boat as I was, authors stuck  somewhere along the path between writing a book to successfully selling it. My need became the incentive to develop The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors. You can read the manifesto, which is just a fancy way of saying vision and purpose by clicking here.

I’ve heard sad stories of garages full of self-published books that don’t sell because the authors don’t know what to do once they have them. I would heartily recommend The Author Platform as an excellent way to begin. It costs a little money, but compared to the cost of just storing unsold books, it’s a pittance. Knowledge truly is powerful.

I’m not sure that authors reading my blog entry titled Are Self-Publishing Authors Saps? really caught what I was trying to say.  So I’m going to take another crack at driving the point home. Unless you are science textbook writer you probably aren’t into mathematics, but I will have to use a little 3rd grade math here, so stay with me. If you are considering self-publishing, you probably have a day job. According to the census the average American earns around $40 K per year. Suppose you paid less than five bucks each for a nice trade soft-cover book and could sell it for around twenty dollars? That would give you $15 profit per book. To replace your salaried income would require that you sell a tad over 51 books per week.

Let’s be honest here. No major publisher will be interested in a book that  sells only 51 copies per week, but if 51 books a week replaced your salary wouldn’t that be great? What would happen if you sold 100 books, or 200? Again, these aren’t numbers that will impress a big time publisher. They wouldn’t consider it longer than the time it takes to flick a fly off their foreheads, but what could it mean to you? Think about it.

This is the hidden secret: you don’t have to be a best selling author to make a decent living as a writer, but:

1. You do have to put in the time. You will soon learn that writing the book was the easy part. Marketing and promoting the book will consume all you have to give.
2. You have to be willing to take the risk. You will incur costs getting your book ready to print, not to mention the printing costs themselves.
3. You have to learn the ropes. You probably aren’t going to sell your 51 books a week standing on a street corner hawking them like newspapers. You have to learn from the real pros, and therein is a rub. I hate to tell you this, but the Internet is crawling with wolves and knaves. Anyone with a tincture of information and some copy writing skill is trying to pass themselves off as your savior, the answer to all of your problems. If you follow their advice, the promised great riches will indeed appear–they’ll appear in their pockets–and disappear out of yours. Knowledge is the shield you need to protect you.
4. You have to have a marketable product. It doesn’t matter what route you take. If the public isn’t interested in your book it won’t sell well no matter what you do. Take a good hard look at your book. Try to stand away from the emotion of your work and look at it for what it truly is. Everyone thinks that their’s is the most beautiful baby in the room, but love blinds. Listen to your critics. Weigh their advice carefully, but always remember that critics are often wrong. Their opinion is just an opinion. Ultimately the choice is yours to proceed or not.

Writers write because they have to. Did you get that? They have to. But a writer without readers is a cow without an udder. Producing the milk is one thing, but if there isn’t a way to dispense it, the readers go thirsty, and the cow bloats and dies. I don’t necessarily mean a literal death, but the death of the writer’s talent, a potentially promising career, and a unique voice.

You, the author, have something to say. You have some information to impart, or a story to tell, or maybe some humorous material. Whatever it is, you wouldn’t have started writing if you didn’t feel that people needed to hear from you. It could be that your particular audience isn’t very large, but are they large enough to sustain steady sales of your book? You may never interest a traditional publisher, but you could, and should aim at creating an adequate income to support your writing career. Who knows, if you are financially able to keep writing, and keep publishing, that illusive best seller might just come popping out sometime. Wouldn’t that be great?

Oh, by the way, don’t forget to keep up with The Red Hen Association of Self-Publishing Authors. With mutual cooperation we will soon know which of the services available have merit and which to avoid.