Publishing Services: the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly [Live Workshop]
Self-publishing is a business. It is really no different from traditional publishing.
Everything that the Big Five publishing houses do to bring a book to market must be done by you in your self-publishing business, plus some.
Traditional publishers don’t write the books they publish. You do. You grant them the publishing rights in your book.
As a self-published author you retain all of the publishing rights to your books. You control all artistic, editorial, and business decisions. You keep the revenue and decide on the expenses. This is the power of self-publishing, if you know how to wield it.
But first, you have to make your book available for people to buy. Your book is your product. Without a product to sell, you have no business.
What Goes into Publishing a Book?
As a self-published author, you manage and pay for every step in the publishing process:
- Writing
- Editing
- Design
- Production
- Distribution
- Publicity
- Marketing
- Rights Management
Traditional publishers have in-house teams to tackle each area of book production.
You can undertake to learn each aspect of the business for a truly DIY operation. Or, you can assemble a team of people and services to help you meet your publishing goals. Team members who are better able to do those tasks in the production process that you are not equipped to do or do not want to do.
Take on the pieces of the process you enjoy and farm out the rest to professionals who offer publishing services.
What are Publishing Services?
Simply put, publishing services are services paid for by the author to handle any part or all of the book production process. These services may be offered by individuals who have specific expertise or skills (think editors or book cover designers), or they may be offered by companies with complete publishing packages. And anything in between.
The self-publishing industry and the services that support it are growing every year. Sorting through the options can be like wandering through a maze. There are so many branching paths that an author can get very, very lost. Getting lost in your business can cost you a lot of money. Money and time.
In this month’s workshop, we will explore the types of services that are available for each step in the publishing process. We will discuss how to identify the services you need given your personal skill set and budget in order to maximize the return you get when investing in book production. We’ll talk about how to evaluate services to understand the value you will get from using them.
How Can You Avoid Being Scammed?
With the huge growth in self-publishing opportunities comes equally large growth in fly-by-night, opportunistic, or dishonest service providers. We’ll discuss how to reduce your chances of being victimized by fraudsters and incompetents.
Our guest this month is Allyson Machate. As a publishing consultant, Ally has served small and Big Five publishers, including Simon & Schuster, where she acquired and edited books on staff. Her clients include authors with such companies as Simon & Schuster, Penguin Random House, Rodale, Chronicle Books, Kaplan Publishing, Sourcebooks, and Hay House, as well as independently published bestsellers. Ally also leads a diversified team of professionals who specialize in helping authors to write, publish, and sell their books.
When you are in the business of self-publishing, you carry all the cost and financial risk. In this workshop you’ll discover how to reduce that risk and increase the reward by building your own team of individuals and publishing services to deliver a professionally produced, good book.
This workshop is being offered as a stand alone opportunity. You do not have to be a member of the Creative Law Center to attend it (members will have access, of course, and need not purchase the workshop separately). You’ll get an email with the Zoom link for Wednesday, November 17 at 1 p.m., EST once you sign up. You will have lifetime access to the replay.
This is a live, interactive workshop using Zoom. You will be able to ask questions in real time, so bring your list.
Self-publishing – you may do it for yourself, but you do not have to do it alone.