iUniverse and Me

by Suellen Zima
(California)

Writing and publishing a book remained low down on my "to do" list for a very long time until I heard about Print On Demand publishing as an option to vanity press or trying to outlive rejections by traditional publishers.

I was not really computer literate, so the technical part of publishing Print On Demand was rather daunting. But I bought a pc and hired a tutor to teach me Word in the summer of 2005. I hadn't yet chosen a publisher, but was leaning toward iUniverse for a few good reasons. One was that the price was very reasonable and they offered the service of being able to talk with the staff by phone. I needed that crutch.

Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird came together rather quickly since it was drawn from the many journals I had diligently kept during my many nomadic years traveling the world in general, and China in particular, as an English teacher. When it was in fact a very large file on my computer, I called iUniverse and fortunately spoke to a very patient, kind person there who gave me encouragement to send my manuscript in.

At that time, spring of 2006, I chose the Select package for $399 rather than the cheapest package because I wanted an individually-designed cover for my book, I wanted it to be available as an e-book, and I wanted it to be available on amazon.com and bn.com. And, my book would be duly noted in Books in Print.

The person I was assigned to for the publishing part was not as personable and upbeat as the one who had first guided me to submit my manuscript, but she did her job efficiently and always responded to e-mails within 24 hours.

I was pleasantly surprised by the cover design after giving my ideas. iUniverse allows one re-do of their cover design, or you need to send in your own graphic version. I was also sufficiently stunned when they magically turned my manuscript into a book with page numbers and a Table of Contents. It looked great! My manuscript had been over 500 pages, but when it was set up in book style, I came out with 325 pages.

And then I started proof reading it. Even after years of correcting my students' compositions, I never appreciated how tedious and yes, even difficult, proof reading was. In the "What I'd do differently" category, I would have hired my own proof reader. All corrections to errors made by the publisher are free. And iUniverse allows 50 corrections of what you submit for free. After that, the author must pay additional money for corrections in blocks of 50. So, the initial price of publishing my book went up.

When grammar, spelling, and everything else started looking wrong to me, I stopped correcting and gave the go-ahead to publish it.

Shipping costs are high because iUniverse uses UPS. The advantage is that UPS tracks everything. When I received my first shipment of books and held my very own book in my hands, I must admit I thought it was the most beautiful book in the world.

Since my goal had been publishing my memoirs in a readable book form inexpensively, I hadn't given much thought to marketing. I knew that, without buying into a more expensive service, iUniverse would quickly abandon me with a "goodbye and good luck" and monthly newsletters. I must admit I felt somewhat orphaned. A complimentary graphic of a bookmark and poster helped somewhat.

Thus, I entered the most frustrating part of choosing iUniverse as my publisher. And marketing continues to frustrate me. While I see success stories in the newsletters from iUniverse, I am so far one of the typical self-published authors who finds satisfaction in having written and published a good book, but which will be read by a very small (eclectic) group of consumers. Those authors with more Internet know-how have a better chance.

A major problem was getting a professional review for my book. The only service offered by iUniverse was a special arrangement with Kirkus Reviews for self-published books which costs as much as I originally paid for my book to be published. I eventually found a website that offers free reviews on iUniverse books, but the service is not officially connected to, or recognized by, iUniverse itself.

Unless one can sell oodles of books, I don't really see any way that an author publishing with iUniverse can make any substantial money. iUniverse sets the price of the book, which seems over-inflated as books go. The portion that comes back to the author as royalties is a very small percentage of the price paid for the book. Publishing is a money making business, and iUniverse makes most of the money on its books.

In a fairly recent move, iUniverse now offers a program to help with website design. I think this is a plus since I paid privately for a web designer.

One huge drawback to selling well was iUniverse's no-return policy. Unless they're sure of sales, bookstores don't want to be stuck with books they can't return. iUniverse, after years of making rather lame excuses for why the no-return policy wasn't a big deterrent, (an e-mail reply offered me the advice to "think out of the box") now newly offers for $599 the chance for a return policy for bookstores.

Do I regret choosing self-publishing? Definitely not. Do I regret choosing iUniverse? From what I've heard from other self-published authors with other publishers, there are some advantages and disadvantages with each. I've even heard from some traditionally published authors that they're not so happy with the marketing done by their publishers. At least iUniverse hasn't gone out of business as other POD publishers have, and they continue to very quickly produce a fine-looking copy of my book whenever requested. I don't need to guess how many books to print in advance or find a place to store cartons of books as other author friends have. And I don't need to worry that it will go out of print.

I still have time and the opportunity to learn about other marketing approaches as self-publishing continues to mushroom. And my self-published book has been able to successfully compete with traditionally published books in a national writing competition.

Besides being proud of having written and published a book, I feel like I am a pioneer in the continually expanding world of self-publishing.

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