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POD Covers and POD....
Everyone, I am about to plunge into the world of custom artwork for my Alfreda novels. (Yes, I have pretty much decided not to submit them to NYC. The agent will get other things from me, but I do not expect a house to offer me a contract I could sign.)
This is not going to be cheap, and apparently I need to decide up front which group I'm going to work with for the POD version. The templates vary. The artist can make a print cover and then create the ebook cover from it, but the reverse doesn't happen easily, if at all. So -- this is your chance to express yourself.
Have you tried any of the POD suppliers? Create Space? Lightning Source? Lulu? I'm going to search for quality vs.cost vs. distribution options. I want acid-free paper. We're talking three books that I hope convention vendors will be interested in trying out, that I hope might make their way into bookstores. But I also realize that sales online, even of print, may be all that will happen, since trade paperback books are so much higher in price (last I checked) than mass market books.
I'm interested in your experiences and opinions, if you would like to share them. You can contact me by message, if you want to comment privately.
I want to hear your war stories. I can only afford to do this once -- screwing up will set me back years and money I don't have to spare. So, anyone who has time to share their story? This is the moment.
And yes, I will share conclusions. An Excel spreadsheet will be born!
Thank you.
This is not going to be cheap, and apparently I need to decide up front which group I'm going to work with for the POD version. The templates vary. The artist can make a print cover and then create the ebook cover from it, but the reverse doesn't happen easily, if at all. So -- this is your chance to express yourself.
Have you tried any of the POD suppliers? Create Space? Lightning Source? Lulu? I'm going to search for quality vs.cost vs. distribution options. I want acid-free paper. We're talking three books that I hope convention vendors will be interested in trying out, that I hope might make their way into bookstores. But I also realize that sales online, even of print, may be all that will happen, since trade paperback books are so much higher in price (last I checked) than mass market books.
I'm interested in your experiences and opinions, if you would like to share them. You can contact me by message, if you want to comment privately.
I want to hear your war stories. I can only afford to do this once -- screwing up will set me back years and money I don't have to spare. So, anyone who has time to share their story? This is the moment.
And yes, I will share conclusions. An Excel spreadsheet will be born!
Thank you.
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I found Lulu easy to use and there's zero up-front cost... you just upload your files, set the price, and whenever someone buys a copy (through lulu.com or amazon.com) you get your cut. You can set the price to any value above the cost (they are up-front about how much of that is the cost of printing and how much is their profit) and you get the difference on every sale. You can also order copies yourself, at cost... I always keep a few in the trunk of my car.
Selling through lulu.com and amazon.com is free, but you can also have the book listed in the Ingram catalog for $75. Getting any kind of print-on-demand book into brick-and-mortar bookstores is hard, though, because the cost of producing the book is high... you have to either price the book much higher than a comparable traditionally-printed book, sacrifice your own profit, ask the store to accept a much lower discount (profit margin), or some combination of the 3.
"Lulu uses FSC certified, lead-free, acid-free, buffered paper made from wood-based pulp."
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Have you asked about what's going on with global, Michelle? I'd think Amazon could sell paper for you, if they offered it. But of course no one is looking out for the little guy, if Amazon isn't printing it.
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The physical copy of it pleased me - as a note book I've beat it to hell and it's still got decent binding.
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I paid for a cover that could be used for the ebook version, if it came to that; the designer did both the wraparound and the ebook version. But we used stock art, and the cost was 300.00. I also paid someone to typeset, which was more - 2.00 a page.
But.
I didn’t do this with the expectation that I would actually *sell* many copies. And I haven’t.
My book was a short story collection. I had released the shorts in ebook format, one per ebook. But print readers asked if there would be a print version available. The short stories are connected to the (continuing) universe published by DAW books; the shorts appeared in various anthologies, all but one of which are out of print. I reprinted as ebooks on my own, and people started to ask, on my web-site, if there would be a print version.
I think I’ve sold 30 copies to date (not including copies I ordered for my own use.
I *knew*, going in, that the print version would be a money sink; that the ebooks would pay for the costs of producing a POD version I could personally live with. I didn’t expect, ever, that POD would pay for itself. It’s possible that I should have gone for CreateSpace, because I think that *would* have appeared on Amazon, and I might have sold a few more copies - but I doubt I would have sold a *lot* more.
The book *can* be ordered from Ingrams, so in theory, the book can be ordered by bookstores. But. Well.
If you want a POD version for the print readers you have, that’s fine. I did, because the people who were asking were also people who have pretty much read all my books in print, and I felt guilty not making a print format version available for them.
But it’s in no way a money maker. It’s a money sink. The ebooks have done more than well enough to cover the cost of the print version -- but the print version will never even pay for itself. I could have skipped the typesetting, which was the most expensive part of the process - but I actually wanted interiors that looked, to me, like a print book; it’s one of the things that I really notice the lack of in POD books.
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I wonder if the lack of break-even is because it's a collection? Some people are big collection readers -- but collections are so rare because publishers don't make money on collections.
Even Miller & Lee, who do chapbooks (or did) a lot, waited years before doing a collection. And they stored their own books. Not an option for me.
These are novels. To a certain extent, I simply want a paper alternative when someone EMFs all the digital stuff.... And I'd like an acid-free version because frankly these are my children. I am going to leave a few of them behind.
I know cover art is critical. I see PODs at my library (good SF/fantasy collection) from writers with prior major houses, and they don't get checked out as much because the cover art is not pick-upable.
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It could be. I know that Jim Hines did one POD collection, and I think he only did the one, for reasons similar to mine. I’m trying to remember who the other author was - maybe Tobias Buckell? - who also came to the same conclusions, again for the same reasons. But I think he was also self-pubbing a collection. I’m certain about Hines, but less certain about Buckell, though.
Neither of us were doing novels that way. If I were to self-publish a new novel, I would probably make a POD version available - but I would probably attempt to do it through Lightning Source, because the book would then be available in the UK and in Australia.
But even then, I wouldn’t assume that the POD would pay for itself, necessarily. I think the novel would pay for the cover, if the cover were the same cost (300.00), though. The ebook sales have been good; I’d probably eat the cost of the POD because I’d be certain the ebook sales would more than cover it. If I were very tight for household income, I wouldn’t do it, though.
ETA: paragraph breaks - for some reason none of them were included =/
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But there's a chance that the books will make back their covers and more, so decisions to be made...
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But there's a chance that the books will make back their covers and more, so decisions to be made...
You didn’t mention ebooks in the original post - you intend to do ebook versions of the books, right?
The only reason I made my original comment was the money. I absolutely understand the desire for a physical book, because those are what I read when I formed a deep attachment to reading.
If you’re doing ebooks anyway, the money for those covers has to come out of savings; the additional money for the POD version wouldn’t (generally) be as much--50.00 or slightly higher per book cover.
But if bringing money in Right Now is part of the plan, I would seriously concentrate on the ebooks first. Some follow-up coming via email.
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Also, shouldn't the BVC people have some singular experience with that. Oh right, and since I see MSW posting below, she did get those spiffy covers for her short stories.
Another person who offers ebook conversion is independently published author Moriah Jovan (no idea how long her waitling list is). I can personally vouch for the beauty of her ebooks at least. http://b10mediaworx.com/b10mwx/
I bet this link will put me in the spam folder again, heh.
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I'm thinking I want to work with the artist who just did Linda Nagata's new cover for MEMORY. (You saw that post over at BVC?) Lovely work -- just needs stronger fonts for lettering, IMO. I think I told you my idea for doing Alfred covers? A young girl's hands holding spring/stream water -- and a different image on each book? Maybe a werewolf for NC, a stag with flaming antlers for KR, and a maze seen from eye level, heading for a T, for Spirit Tracks? I'm even thinking of different seasons for the feeling behind the hands and stream -- summer for NC, autumn for KR, winter for ST.
I am not sure I know enough about Photoshop to do that, Estara. Maybe I'm too ambitious? But I know that sucky cover art can kill a book or an ebook. It killed the Alfredas originally.
Maybe Andrea will share a few bullet points, if asked. Good idea, thanks.
POD covers
Re: POD covers
These aren't just books to me -- this series is my baby.
If I could get a decent contract from NYC, I'd work with Ace, because Anne Sowards loved the Allie books. But she didn't want to buy the backlist until I finished the third -- and the third isn't finished because of financial pressures. I understand her position, but she's lost her advantage. I need income, and that means getting the books out as fast as I can.
Don't I need a manuscript from you? ;^)
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P.
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