Self-published authors have ridden to fame and fortune on the wings of two technologies: e-books, and the hybrid print book production-distribution method known as print on demand.
Each of these technologies reduces the financial risk inherent in book publishing. This is especially important for print books, where print on demand has eliminated the need for inventory, warehousing, shipping, and fulfillment, since it’s a complete automated system.
The ease of use of print on demand sites has also made print book production less intimidating for authors who are mostly neophytes when it comes to getting their books printed.
However, there are real business reasons for successful indie authors to reach beyond easy-to-produce print on demand paperbacks. For one, there are many kinds of books we can profitably publish ourselves.
Most of these books are produced using offset printing, just like most of the print books sold in the United States today.
Offset printing seems so twentieth-century to the digerati, driven as it is by huge, noisy, industrial equipment producing thousands of books at a time. But successful indie authors who want to keep growing will eventually add offset printing to their capabilities.
In a way, you could see a shift to offset printing as the maturation of the indie author phenomenon. Fixated on ebooks and POD paperbacks, many authors have never considered how more engaging physical products can be, and how they might change the way authors visualize, plan, and produce their books.
Varieties of the Print Book Experience
When you think of a book as a consumer product, one that competes with podcasts, streaming video, and all the other ways we entertain ourselves, you understand that the packaging of your book may be as important to your sales as the content itself.
Unfortunately, most indie authors believe that the only print books available to them are basic trade paperbacks from print on demand vendors. There’s nothing wrong with them, and I use them myself, but they fall far short of the totality of books and packaging we can call on to produce our retail products—books.
What’s available outside of print on demand for packaging the work you’ve poured your heart and soul into?
- Trade paperbacks at much lower cost, since offset books will save 25-50% over print on demand
- Landscape formats in many shapes, proportions, and sizes
- Hardcover books at reasonable prices, and with stamped cases
- Lay-flat books with a variety of binding styles
- Archival papers and sewn bindings for longevity
- Casewrap hardcovers for text books and manuals
- Coffee table books in large formats with luscious color printing
- Specialty printing papers in a multitude of colors, weights, and finishes
- Jackets and covers that can be foil stamped, embossed, and die cut
Obviously, with the creative freedom these options make possible, indie authors could produce print books that would grab the attention of their readers in a variety of ways, capitalizing on the exactly right vehicle for their books.
Distribution Rules
Probably the biggest reason successful indie authors will start looking to offset printing is distribution.
For the last few years I’ve been predicting that authors who were strongly drawn to book publishing—who learned how to systematically create profitable books—would eventually move on to forming small presses and specialty publishing houses. And that’s exactly what has started happening.
This division of labor makes sense. Very few authors, in my experience, can transform themselves into book production and marketing experts, although that’s what successful self-publishing calls for.
Not only that, but if you have a book you believe warrants national distribution, placement in hundreds or thousands of bookstores, or interviews on major media, you have no choice but to produce your book using offset printing.
You’ll need both the bigger profit margins from offset to accommodate the deep discounting it will take to sign with a master distributor—which is how your books will get into all those bookstores—and you’ll be printing 1,000 books at a minimum, a quantity for which print on demand is unsuited.
But venturing into the big world of offset-printed books can be intimidating. Instead of user-friendly websites that bend over backwards to make the publishing process simple and transparent, you’ll be dealing with printing sales reps, estimators, and customer service people unused to talking to individual authors.
This is why, more than ever, successful authors with aspirations to go bigger, wider, or deeper into publishing need education.
How Publishers Think
In talking to authors about how to transition their successful businesses to the next level, I’ve identified two principal educational needs that, if filled, would help them tremendously:
- Personal comprehension of exactly how print books are physically put together
- Understanding how to deal with the offset printing process and its customs
Print books of all kinds require more technical expertise to produce than ebooks simply because the files you prepare will eventually come to life on real machinery using real paper, ink, toner, glue and all the other materials that go into books.
Meeting this educational imperative is the main reason I’ve gathered together the articles I’ve written over the years on how books are put together and, last year, published Book Construction Blueprint: Expert Advice for Creating Industry-Standard Print Books.
In the coming months I’ll be expanding this book and retitling it in a second edition.
The Blueprint provides expert tips and guidance for authors who want to navigate the world of offset printing, and will help any author who wants to create an industry-standard print book, no matter what kind of printing they use.
I regularly meet quite a few entrepreneurial authors at various conferences where I’m speaking, and it’s common for authors to become intrigued with the advantages of offset printed books in achieving wider distribution, creating books that are more compelling as physical objects, and the ability to shape the reading experience.
I expect the more entrepreneurially minded authors to look into offset printing for some of their books because that’s how they will continue to grow as publishers.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons
Originally published in a slightly different form as “Indie Authors and the Future of Book Production” in 2017 by Writer’s Digest
Great article. Thanks for your hard work.
Thanks Joel for looking forward. Interesting article I suspect will definitely intrigue and attract certain indie publishers ready to go bigger. My personal reservations, with only 4 books published but more to follow, would be storage, committing to owning so many physical books, and the scare-factor in investing large sums. I guess all that is obvious! Probably, as in Ernie’s case, it’s a more organic transition, when one is selling such quantities that it’s the sensible next step.
It is my goal to move my publishing from POD to offset in the future, but Ernie hit the nail on the head as to why the majority of indie authors and small presses don’t do offset: the enormous up front cost. Once you have a title that is selling solidly, it’s a great idea to explore offset options to give the existing customer base a prettier product. In the meantime, although I understand that the limitations of POD machines prevents options like embossing and die-cut, I’d like to see Ingram start to offer some more advanced options through their service. Even if it’s nicer inks and slightly thinner paper. The current paper used by Ingram is much thicker than offset printers use. Durable, but expensive to use and ship. The paper used by CreateSpace and KDP Print is even worse on that front.
A.M. of course you are right that indie authors are scared away by the necessity of fronting a lot of money for books that have no track record yet, but that’s not the end of the story.
Ernie, who can predict his sales, is not taking any risks, but other authors should think about having an actual marketing plan, an email list large enough to suggest they will be able to recover their investment at the launch, and the marketing savvy to think of ways to defray all or some of the printer’s bill before the books arrive.
For instance, I just wrapped up a pre-sale on my new writer’s journals, which were pretty expensive to develop, and that helped pay almost half of the bill before the books even arrived.
Also, you don’t have to spend $10,000 to get into offset, a modest first printing of a paperback might well be under $2,000, something much more feasible for authors.
Joel: If you email me your address I will send you a
complimentary autographed copy of the Leather Edition of
“Life’s Secret Handbook.” I think that you may find it
interesting and may even want to use it as a sample to have some of your clients publish a similar book. I would venture to say that even best-selling authors such as Brendon Burchard, Tony Robbins, and Tim Ferris don’t have a special leather edition of a book of their own proverbs and sayings. But they may want one once they see mine.
Just a note that I used the special Leather Edition of “Life’s Secret Handbook” to my advantage this morning. I am in Honolulu right now and staying at the Ala Moana Hotel. I am leaving late tomorrow and asked the desk clerk Barbara if I could check out late. She contacted someone and then said that my room would be taken early tomorrow and I would have to check out at the regular check-out time of 11 AM. I was disappointed but decided to give Barbara an autographed copy of “Life’s Secret Handbook” anyway. As I was telling Barbara how special the Leather Edition was and the fact that it had a price of $97 US / $127 Canadian on it, a supervisor happened to overhear me. The supervisor then came over said that I could check out at 2 PM instead of 11 AM and that I could later in the day use a hospitality room for a half hour to rest and have a shower before heading for the airport. Of course, the supervisor also wanted a copy of “Life’s Secret Handbook” which I gladly gave to her. This I know: I will create a lot more favors in the future from hotels, airlines, etc. with this special leather bound edition of “Life’s Secret Handbook.” And as I mentioned before, it works as a cool expensive business card that really stands out. Even if I don’t sell any foreign rights or get any premium sales for this book, I will still get $10,000 worth of favors and enjoyment from giving it away.
Another factor is that POD doesn’t scale up well. If demands for a book explodes, that one-at-a-time printing won’t be able to keep up. I’m not sure if CreateSpace offers move-to-web-press, but Lightning Source does and it’s a good reason to always release your print edition through LSI/Ingram Spark as well as CreateSpace. Here are some of the details.
https://www.inkworldmagazine.com/contents/view_breaking-news/2017-09-13/lightning-source-to-deploy-24-pagewide-web-presses
Good tip, Michael. My old rule of thumb was that if an author felt they were likely to sell at least 500 copies in the next 6 months, to go offset. And that’s about the volume at which LSI will switch you from POD to offset.
First, I just had the twenty-eighth print run of “How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free” done via offset printing. I had 17,392 copies printed at a cost of $1.67 per copy Canadian or about $1.33 US per copy. Cost using POD would likely be at least $4 Canadian a copy.
Second, I just had my latest book “Life’s Secret Handbook (Reminders for Adventurous Souls Who Want to Make a Big Difference in This World)” done in offset printing as well. This book, however, was done in a PU-Leather Edition. I had only 1,000 copies printed in South Korea and the total cost was around $10,000 Canadian. This works out to $10 Canadian a copy or $7.94 US a copy. Given that I put a suggested retail price of $97 US / $127 CAN on the book, it has swagger and works great as an expensive business card. What’s more, I intend to recover my $10,000 Canadian from this book and even make an extra $10,000 to $20,000 in profits. More about this later.
Very interesting, Ernie, and great examples of exactly the kind of advantages offset gives you that I was trying to emphasize in the article. Good luck with that leather edition.