Cameron Chapman

As I’ve mentioned previously, I’m currently writing a non-fiction book (details on exactly what this book is about will be revealed within the next month or so, once I’m a bit further into the project). When I first got the idea for the book, I planned on writing up a proposal, an outline, and a couple of sample chapters, and shopping it around to agents and publishers. It’s a long process, finding an agent, and sometimes an even longer one to find a publisher.

Photo by David Masters, via Flickr

I estimated finding an agent would take a minimum of six months, and then finding a publisher would likely take another six (that’s assuming I could even find an agent, and that they could in turn find a publisher—both are far from definite). At that point I’d finish writing the book, another three months. Then it would go to an editor, who would look it over and decide what needed improvement, and then I would edit again, taking another month or two. Hopefully, by then it would be in good enough shape to progress on to line edits and then a copyeditor, taking another few months. All told, I realized I was looking at a minimum of probably two years before my book would ever see the light of day.

TWO YEARS!

Now, without going into too much detail, the subject I’m writing about is likely to change quite a bit in the next two years. And for all I know, there could be a handful of publishers out there with books like mine already in the works that could be realeased months before mine. I could end up releasing a book into a fully-saturated market. Not exactly what I wanted to do.

So I started looking into self-publishing. And the more I read, the more convinced I became that the type of book I’m working on would be very well-suited to going it on my own and becoming an indie publisher. Here are some of the reasons:

• It’s in a very specific niche but still has a very large market (up to 80% of teenagers are likely to be interested, along with plenty of adults)
• It’s particularly well-suited to online, viral marketing campaigns
• It’s not going to be a particularly long book (~250 pages), keeping production costs down
• It’s particularly suited for word of mouth promotion
• The topic and format are likely to get more publicity in particularly appropriate niche sites

I realize that’s all a bit criptic, but I’m still not quite ready to disclose what the topic is. The marketing campaign for the book will be launching in about a month, so everything will be disclosed then.

Now, there are a lot of self-publishing options available to the indie publisher.

There are subsidy presses and vanity presses that sometimes cover part of the expenses of publishing (sometimes the author pays for all of it). Many of these companies are misleading at best in their approach to authors, implying that their imprints are just as respected as the traditional, big publishing houses (they’re not).

There are self-publishing services such as CreateSpace, Blurb, and Lulu (among tons of others) where you pay a setup fee, and either provide editing, copyediting, design and all the other things that go along with producing a book yourself, or pay sometimes exorbitant fees to them to perform those functions. Often, you can provide your own ISBN, meaning that you are your own publisher, not CreateSpace or Lulu or Blurb. Otherwise, they’ll provide you with an ISBN (either for free or a small fee) and they will be listed as your publisher. The biggest drawback to these companies is that the per-book price is often quite high, making it almost impossible to make a profit if you want to remain competitive.

I’ve decided to go it completely alone, without anyone there to hold my hand other than the customer service people at the vendors I’ve chosen. I’ll be setting up my own publishing company (Untime Press, and yes, I have a great story about the origin of the name) and ordering at least one ISBN for said company (probably just one at this point to keep costs down). I’m going to go through Lightning Source for my printing needs (they’re the largest POD printer in the world and a subsidiary of Ingram, one of the largest book distributors in the world). I’ll be doing all of my own layout and design (I have a background in magazine layout and design) and all of my own promotion and marketing (hopefully with some help from a few friends).

It’s a big undertaking. There are tons of things to plan, to organize, to manage, all while I’m writing the book. There are self-imposed deadlines to meet. There are all of my regular writing responsibilities to keep track of, two blogs to manage, and another big website project I’m working on, plus all of my usual household and family responsibilities. I’m thinking it’s probably going to be overload for my Moleskine planner and might require me to look into some online time management apps (luckily, I’ve written at least four articles that should help me in my search for the perfect app).

In the end, though, I think it’s going to be well worth it. This is the kind of project that could take off with a life of its own (I’m hoping it does). I’ll be blogging the process of writing the book and self-publishing it here and you’ll be the first to know when the book’s website is launched later this month.

If anyone has self-publishing tips, non-fiction writing tips, or any other advice for what I’m doing, please post in the comments below!