Self-publishing ‘Sweet Treats’ remains one of the most rewarding things I’ve done. As I mentioned, my first experience of publishing, through Blurb, was a sort of halfway house in the self-publishing arena. It was excellent experience, but it also served to highlight some of the things I needed to do better. Once I reached the point where my little cakes book had become too expensive to print on demand there and sell, I began to explore other avenues for keeping it on the market. As you know, it ended up becoming an ebook, ‘Miniature Beaded Cakes’, but the investigation I undertook along the way established my path for Sweet Treats.
First stop, the ISBN. I looked at another self-publishing site, called Lulu, which offered an ISBN as part of its deal, but I soon discovered that the cost of printing ‘Let’s Celebrate’ with them would still be too high. Whatever happened, I would need to do a large print run in order to bring the costs down to a manageable level and, having already sold a couple of hundred books, I had no idea whether I would be able to increase sales further or whether they were simply going to drop off, so rather than take the risk with my existing book, I thought I would save that experiment for a new title.
I then looked further and discovered that I could in fact buy some ISBNs from Nielsen, so effectively set myself up as a publishing house, then I could get the photography, layout and printing done by independent companies. I would have control over the whole process, but also be taking the financial risk, so the success or failure of the venture would be down to my ability to market the book and the willingness of people to buy it.
Strange coincidences kept occurring that just made ‘Sweet Treats’ come together very easily, as if it was meant to be! Just at the time I was looking around for people to do the different elements of production, my copy of the Beadworkers Guild Journal arrived. It contained an interview with the photographer, Michael Wicks, who takes all the photos for the journal and any other publicity that BWG carries out. He was offering tips to all us beaders for taking our own photos, but I spotted that he was based very close to me, so what could be better?…a local photographer who was experienced at taking beadwork and who takes beautiful photos. I got in touch with Michael and the rest is history. Not only did he take the amazing photos that you see in sweet Treats, but he also put me in touch with Punchbowl Design, a couple called Liz and Drew who actually live in Australia, but have done work with Michael in the past.
You might think that working with a company in Australia could be a little inconvenient, but in actual fact it was amazingly efficient. Thanks to the wonders of the internet (and dropbox), we were able to share files really easily, so I just sent Liz and Drew all the text and photos along with an outline of the layout I wanted for each page and the overall feel that I was looking for in the design. Liz sent back some design ideas, we agreed on colouring and I selected my preferred theme from the options, a few tweaks later and the feel of the book had been determined. Liz was a joy to work with as we seemed to be on exactly the same wavelength and the book just flowed. In addition, the Australia-England working plan was incredibly efficient due to the time difference. During my daytime I would look through what had been sent to me, do any proofing, make any comments and email it back to Liz and Drew. They woke up to receive my notes, spent their daytime working on them and I would have the next draft ready when I woke up the following day – efficiency taken to a new level!
I had carried out some research into printing companies, but Michael was able to put me in touch with a couple that he had used in the past and that’s where I found the Colour Factory. In my experience, there is a little difference in the factors that are important when trying to put together the right team of people. Of course price is something to consider with every element, but it’s not about getting the cheapest quote for each part of the process. The quality of the photography and design is so important to creating a finished product that is beautiful and not just serviceable, so the people you use to do these things have to be really talented. These are also people with whom I found myself working very closely. I had a clear image in my head of what I wanted my book to look like, so I had to be able to convey that image to the photographer and designers and also make sure that they actually produced what I was looking for. Believe me, this is not a process you wish to go through with people that you don’t get on with, or people who see the product in a different way to you – it’s so important that you can all share the same vision, or the process becomes a nightmare.
When I started looking into all the quotes, I assumed that printing would just be a matter of finding the cheapest deal, but even that is surprisingly complicated. There are different ways of binding books, different types of paper, the need to make sure that the printing ink is going to be true to the photo colours…I could go on! So for me, it didn’t just come down to getting the lowest price, but again, to finding a company who would really work with me and guide me through the process as I had absolutely no experience! My eventual choice, ‘The Colour Factory’ were great at doing this and they had worked with Liz and Drew in the past, so that meant it made things very easy in ensuring that the PDF file I received from Punchbowl Design was literally ready to print. Most printers will offer some service to modify a file to make sure it will print correctly, but this costs money, so it’s far easier if the designers can get all of that sorted out in the beginning.
I hope that’s been an interesting take on what can be involved in self-publishing. I was recently reading a blog guide to the process (maybe I should have read that a couple of years ago before I started out!) which was very informative and very encouraging in its assessment of the self-publishing market, so if anyone wants a few more ideas, have a read! Just to finish up, I want to say a big thank you to everyone who has been reviewing my Beaded Christmas series. There are reviews appearing on the Vivebooks website, on Amazon and also in a couple of Blogs, so thank you to Soulshine Studio and Dee Wingrove Smith (both their blogs are great anyway and talk about lots of other beady stuff!). I’m going to stick with Christmas for a bit now (don’t tell anyone yet, but I have some Christmas treats planned for all of you…all will be revealed soon!) and leave the publishing, but if anyone from Search Press, Lark books, GMC or any of the other big publishing houses would like me to write a book, I wouldn’t mind seeing what it’s like to work with a big traditional print publisher….Meantime I have another four books planned or in early stages of production, so my journey will be continuing!
