The Joy of Self-Publishing. Mike MD Buchanan
into the vanity publishers’ hype. Or if you do, don’t come moaning to me about the outcome.
The vanity publishers’ websites often intimate that they employ expert cover designers. Why, then, do most of the book covers on display on their websites – and you have to assume they pick the best designs for their websites – look so unimpressive? Because they use design templates, as we’ll see. Some of the vanity publishers’ business models and pricing structures are difficult to understand, and when services are offered they generally cost more than you’d pay for a top-flight freelance professional. And when they cost less, my hunch is that’s because they won’t do a professional job of, for example, proofreading. But you’ll never know that; you’ll only know they’ve improved your manuscript to an extent.
On the afternoon of 12 January 2010 I was busy working on my fifth book, a book of quotations, when my search led me to the Bob Dylan quotation which kicks off this introduction. Like all good quotations, it sparked off some thoughts. To be more precise, it made me think about my whole life.
At the age of 52, after 30 years working in business, I could claim to have had some success as a businessman. A good income had financed a good standard of living for many years, but I just wasn’t getting fulfilment from my work any more. I was much happier in the gaps between my assignments when I could write books and self-publish them.
At the age of 50, in 2008, my first book, Profitable Buying Strategies, was published internationally by Kogan Page, a leading publisher. It’s a book on corporate cost management, the field I’d worked in for 25 years. It’s been translated into Chinese, one of the odder-looking books in my library. Writing that book gave me the writing ‘bug’ and I wrote and self-published four more books in the ensuing two years, before this one:
Guitar Gods in Beds. (Bedfordshire: a heavenly county) – the colourful biographies of eight guitarists living in or near my adopted home town of Bedford.
Two Men in a Car (A Businessman, a Chauffeur, and Their Holidays in France) – a travelogue about two holidays in France with my friend and socialist chauffeur, Paul Carrington, whose autobiography is contained in Guitar Gods in Beds . The paperback edition isn’t available to order outside the United Kingdom; if you’d like to order a copy please email me on [email protected]. I’ve just made the book available at a recession-busting price as an ebook for Amazon’s Kindle device and other major e-readers, and the plate section of Two Men in a Car is located at the end of this book. The two books have different page sizes, this book having the larger pages of the two.
The Marriage Delusion: The Fraud of the Rings? – a book inspired by the breakdown of my second marriage. It argues that most people in the developed world in the modern era are unsuited to marriage. The title is available in both paperback and ebook editions as The Fraud of the Rings.
Buchanan’s Dictionary of Quotations for right-minded people – a collection of quotations for people with right-of-centre political persuasions. It was inspired by the then forthcoming 2010 general election in the United Kingdom, an election that the execrable left-wing administration which had been in power since 1997 was expected to lose – and duly did, I’m pleased to say. The American edition which has virtually identical content is imaginatively titled Buchanan’s Dictionary of Quotations for right-minded Americans.
I can honestly say I prefer self-publishing to being published, for a host of reasons. Higher income per copy sold, full creative control, no deadlines to distort the project, and more besides. Self-publishing can be very fulfilling if you go about it the right way, and it’s lucrative for a small number of writers. Dr Vernon Coleman, about whom I shall be saying more, has been a self-publisher for over 20 years – he now has over 100 books to his name – and he owns homes in Devon, London and Paris.
On occasion, when I was particularly fed up with my normal working life, I had fantasised about taking early retirement and focusing full-time on writing and self-publishing. It would require some ‘downsizing’ and a willingness to live more modestly, but that was an ever more appealing prospect with every month that passed. I just needed a gentle push or two in the right direction.
The Bob Dylan quotation at the start of this Introduction was the first push. The second push arrived ten minutes later. I was visiting Amazon.com to see if I had any new reviews from American readers. The Marriage Delusion had already received a couple of 5-star reviews from American lady readers, and a new review had been posted the previous day:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An honest assessment of modern marriage – at last!!!!
January 10, 2010
Mary B ‘Book Chaser’ (North Carolina)
This is a brilliant and honest look at the realities of modern marriage. Mr. Buchanan bravely exposes the painful truths of why marriage isn’t working for most of us. He paints with very broad strokes to depict the sometimes subtle inconsistencies between our assumptions about marriage and the realities. For example, why some unhappily married people continue to extol the virtues of marriage. Particularly relevant for me was the description of introversion versus extroversion and the impact the different personality traits can have on marriage. As a happily divorced introvert, I feel vindicated. I now accept and appreciate that my singleness is a valid lifestyle choice for me as an introvert, and that my yen for solitude doesn’t make me a bad person. The book is filled with excellent excerpts from other writers that corroborate Mr. Buchanan’s observations. The writing defies political correctness, and it is well balanced. Buchanan’s candor is delightfully naughty. This is truly the most uniquely written book I’ve read in years.
I stood taller that day, I can tell you. And I have stood taller ever since. My thanks to Bob Dylan and Mary B for helping me realise that I should take the plunge and focus full-time on writing and self-publishing.
So at the ripe old age of 52 I took early retirement, cashed in my pension plans, and I am now enjoying spending my days writing and self-publishing. It’s been about eighteen months so far and I haven’t once regretted the decision to retire. I sometimes have to stop myself writing seven days a week – it just doesn’t seem like work. The publishing side is work, but it takes up little of my time. I’ve rarely been happier.
Books about self-publishing rarely cover the topic of quality adequately, if they cover it at all. I wanted to see if I could write and publish books which didn’t appear self-published, and after a lot of hard work I’d like to think I’ve succeeded. My readers tell me I have. And I’m doing what I want to do with my days so Bob Dylan thinks I’m a success, although he hasn’t had the good grace to tell me so. Typical.
In my professional career I bought countless different goods and services, but I never bought dreams. But I think that when writers – and especially new writers – spend money with vanity publishers on ‘publishing packages’, they’re buying dreams. Whatever a publisher may say, if you’re spending your own money to have the company publish your work, the company is a vanity publisher. Full stop. The only question is what type of vanity publisher they are.
I shudder when I visit some of the vanity publishers’ websites offering publishing packages. One is currently selling packages for almost £11,000. Another publisher states that your books can be printed in any one of a variety of fonts. Wow, like, amazing, man. They often have a range of templates for your material to be put into, which helps them keep their costs down. And your costs too, to be fair. But I don’t like any restrictions when it comes to my writing and publishing. I want to retain full creative and business control at all times.
The only restrictions I will accept – because I must – are those imposed by technology. And even then I’m not happy if I want to do something with a book that isn’t technically possible, or only possible at an uneconomic cost. Researching for this book led me to a vendor, CPI Antony Rowe, prepared to manufacture a single copy of a book with a colour plate section at a low cost, something I’d been seeking for some time.
At the time of writing this – August 2011 – if you order any of