The Joy of Self-Publishing. Mike MD Buchanan
page early in the book will tell you who the printer was. Lightning Source is the largest POD book printer in the world, and Chapter 7 gives an account of its business model, a boon to publishers and self-publishers alike.
If you adopt my self-publishing model you’ll probably only need to deal with three parties: the printer, a copy-editor/proofreader, and a cover designer. Maybe a photographer too, if your cover requires a bespoke photograph. You may be surprised to learn that most book printers, even the largest, will be delighted to deal with you directly. Margins in the printing sector are perennially low, and printers can make a better margin from individual customers than they can from large corporate customers with buying power.
Self-publishing by dealing directly with third parties has a number of benefits other than cost. If you’re dealing directly with a printer which prints digitally – and indeed by offset lithography too, if you’re selling enough books to merit ordering in quantities of 300 copies or more – you will have a huge array of options when it comes to your book’s specification. There are fewer specification options with POD, where the book is only manufactured after a buyer has ordered the book. But the POD model has a number of benefits, financial and other, and I’ll be taking you through them.
At a number of points in the book I refer to a ‘standard’ book specification, especially when I’m trying to make points about costs. The specification should be taken to mean a 272-page paperback with a colour cover and black content text. The specification of this book excluding the plate section, as it happens. What are the chances?
I’ve adopted the increasingly popular convention of leaving the ‘www.’ prefix off website addresses, and I’ve put them in a smaller font than the surrounding text.
It took a lot of time and effort to track down the quotations I put into this book. If you’re a fan of quotations you might like to read through Appendix 1 before you start on Chapter 1. If you’re not, then don’t. Take my advice: reject my advice whenever you feel inclined to do so.
A few words about the cover images showing myself and my œuvre shortly before the publication of this book. The more fashion-conscious reader of a male persuasion interested in adopting the English gentleman look – and how could he not be? – will wish to learn the provenance of the elements of the look. He may be surprised that I’d be willing to divulge this information, but that’s the kind of chap I am.
The bespoke pure new wool suit was tailored by Austin Reed of Regent Street, London – tailors to the stars – and the shirt was bought from Charles Tyrwhitt of Jermyn Street, London. The silk tie came from Christian Dior’s legendary 1992 spring/summer collection, while the very comfortable brogues were manufactured by Cheaney in Desborough, Northamptonshire. The latter were recently repaired by Morgan, a family-run business in Cardiff, cobblers to the Welsh. I am informed by an acquaintance of the American persuasion that brogues are termed ‘wingtips’ in America. Extraordinary.
The umbrella was made by Fox Umbrellas in England, ‘Makers of the world’s finest umbrellas’. Their motto is, ‘Keeping you dry since 1868’. If you’re at least 143, then possibly. Out of sight but contributing to my evident joy are my navy blue pure cotton boxer shorts (Marks & Spencer’s 2009 autumn/winter collection) and red silk blend socks (Moorland Hosiery).
Spectacles from Specsavers – opticians to fashionable Englishmen and Englishwomen for generations – and hair by the lovely Samantha at Bedford’s Toni and Guy completes the look.
I wish you well in your self-publishing venture and I hope this book helps you. If it does, and you feel sufficiently generous to send me a complimentary signed copy of your book, I should be most appreciative. My address is provided on the copyright page.
A word on my use of the word ‘he’ throughout the book when I refer to writers and readers generically. The term should be understood to mean both genders. Political correctness raises my blood pressure – don’t get me started on militant feminist politician Harriet Harman – and this is all I have to say on the subject.
A final thought on the terms ‘writer’ and ‘author’. Which should you call yourself? I’m inclined to call myself a writer on the grounds that until and unless a writer become very successful the term ‘author’ can sound a little pretentious. A bestselling writer once said he always called himself a writer, on the grounds that, ‘I write, I don’t auth.’ Until the next time.
mike buchanan
bedford, old england
1 september 2011
1| MOTIVATION, PERSISTENCE, ADVICE, WRITING AND SELF-PUBLISHING
Well, I try my best
To be just like I am,
But everybody wants you
To be just like them.
Bob Dylan 1941– Maggie’s Farm (song, 1965)
This chapter covers:
-motivations for writing books
-the importance of persistence
-taking advice
-developing distinctiveness as a writer
-plotting and characterisation: Stephen King v. Iain Banks
-adverbs: Stephen King v. George Orwell
-rules of grammar
-introverts’ and extraverts’ leanings towards reading and writing different types of books
-Write Great Fiction
-arguments for preferring self-publishing over being published
-Vernon Coleman: a role model for self-publishers
-marketable writers
-Tom McNab and Flanagan’s Run
I’m a Bob Dylan fan, but if you’re not one yourself you may be relieved to learn that there are only two Bob Dylan quotations in this book, and you’ve now read both of them. Let’s consider the motivations that lay behind writing.
There are three reasons for becoming a writer. The first is that you need the money; the second, that you have something to say that you think the world should know; and the third is that you can’t think what to do with the long winter evenings.
Quentin Crisp 1908–99 English writer: The Naked Civil Servant (1968)
Learn as much by writing as by reading.
Lord Acton 1834–1902 British historian
These two quotations capture my prime motivations for writing. But I have two more. Firstly, I find writing very fulfilling and I increasingly resent anything that takes me away from reading and writing. As a happily divorced man who has taken early retirement and whose children have left home, I have plenty of free time in which to read, write, and self-publish. Joy.
I suspect that writers who claim to hate the writing process – and there are many of them, some of the finest writers included – are extraverts. The solitude that is such an important part of the writing process must be hell for them. But that solitude can be heaven for introverts, especially in the modern era with the availability through the internet of so much information at no cost.
The second motivation occurred to me after a friend, the author Andrew Heslop, made an insightful comment about my travelogue Two Men in a Car. He said that in 100 years’ time someone would read it and laugh at the exploits and attitudes of two wildly different men on holiday in France. This, he pointed out, was more than could be said for the innovative fork lift truck buying strategy I’d devised for Exel Logistics in the 1990s, which was no doubt superseded years ago. He’d hit upon a motivation which hadn’t occurred to me previously, but I think it had been in me all the same. I was writing with an eye on posterity.
Andrew is a published author himself – Kogan Page published his bestseller How to Value and Sell Your Business – and I am