Making Book
by Kiko Denzer
(Blodgett, OR, USA)
Build Your Own Earth Oven - cover
00. THINK:
Last summer, a guy who's been in the publishing industry for about 30 years, told me that he used to be sure of getting his titles reviewed in major papers. He knew the reviewers, and he knew how many books they were looking at. Now, he says (partly due to self-publishing), the number of books being sent out for review has exploded. So I wonder... Maybe I should spend my time talking to family, friends, and neighbors, instead of writing stuff down for strangers. We live in a fragmented society, where people are isolated. Increasingly (especially w/the web), I think that books and the "printed" word isolate us in our own experience. Sure, writing is a way to "share" your experience, but when you "publish" it, suddenly you have to spend a lot of time justifying all the time and expense you put into "packaging" it. The issue was clarified for me, in part, by a couple of good...BOOKS! by Martin Prechtel, and Malidoma Some, both of whom are members of non-literate societies that know much better than we "first-worlders" who they really are and what they owe to the world around them. Too often, I think, literacy separates us from our own experience.
To publish something simply means to make it available to people (it shares a root with words like "populace.") But, as A.J. Liebling wrote, "The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money. He called the press, "the weak slat under the bed of democracy," and suggested that "people everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news."
So there are good reasons NOT to leave to other "publishers" the important business of being a person among people. What would happen if everyone who watched CNN also read a local paper published by neighbors?
My story: I produce and publish a small book that is now (30,000 copies later), in its ninth or tenthprinting and still selling enough every year to pay a lot of bills.
Publishing arn't hard. Hired presses and printers are cheap and accessible. All the info is out there (or here). This is roughly how the process went for me:
1. First (by chance and good fortune) I learned to make ovens.
2. I got excited and built a few for family and other folks. One enthusiastic and effusive friend suggested I teach workshops! I laughed and made a sarcastic reply for which I later had to apologize.
3. I learned to make good bread in the ovens (my mother got me started, decades ago, and more decades later, my father's wife helped me expand and refine my knowledge…).
4. I started sculpting the ovens (sculpture is something else I do).
5. I got invited to share sculpted ovens at some events. I accepted.
6. I realized that other people also got excited about ovens and bread. So I started teaching workshops. Fortunately I'd apologized for laughing at the friend who'd first suggested the idea- otherwise, I might have been too ashamed!
7. I wrote up a hand-out for workshops.
8. I put it all together in a little pamphlet that I had copied at Kinkos for a couple-three bucks each. I sold 'em for $10. (Someone told me to give a directive title to a how-to book, so I called mine, Build Your Own Earth Oven. I like graphic design and books, and in a previous life had done some editing, layout, and publishing. I had a computer and access to others' equipment. I had photos I could scan, drew some pictures and diagrams, and also had enough design sense to make a simple, readable layout. (I later found Robin Williams' great book, The Non-Designer's Design Book, which I highly recommend for designers of any level.)
9. I started printing 20-50 at a time, then by the hundred. People gave me feedback and I made changes when I had the time and motivation; it grew.
10. Mostly, I sold at conferences, or to other teacher. Bookstores weren't interested, as the "book" didn't have a spine and, more important, it didn't have an ISBN.
11. After I'd sold a couple of thousand copies of the pamphlet, I looked more seriously at a "real book" with ISBN, spine, a color cover, etc. It was depressing how expensive it was to print anything locally - but at least I didn't go overseas.
12. A big commercial printer dropped my cost per copy from $2-3 per 16-20 page pamphlet to less than $2 for a 128 page book with a (soft) color cover and 4 pages of color photos. At $15, it was a good deal! (Poynter says the retail price should be at least 8 times the print cost- so $15 was on the low end. And it does take LOTS of time and energy to market a book and manage a business. In addition, most of the books I sell wholesale, at 40-60% off the cover price. But the price equation means I can give a lot away.)
13. The cost of printing is mostly in the set-up fees, plus paper, ink, machine time, shipping, etc. But in the world of commercial publishing, 10,000 copies is a small run. I couldn't afford 3,000 copies, so I had to borrow $5,000 from my brother.
14. I enrolled in a drawing class at the community college -helped me get back into the discipline of drawing, gave me a structure for the work, and taught me a few things. I finished the drawings in a semester, and took a few weeks to produce the final proofs for the book. The printer's "pre-press" department would have done the technical tweaking of photos for me, for a substantial fee-per-photo, but they were also very helpful when I opted to do it myself. It taught me a lot that came in handy later.
15. The bank gave me my five grand in a cashier's check, and I sent a CD of my files off to the printer. The printer sent proofs - very exciting - I made a couple of corrections and sent 'em back. A couple of months later, I went to the freight warehouse to get my books (for a couple hundred bucks less than it would have cost to get 'em delivered the extra 150 miles to my house).
"What's a few books going to weigh?" I thought, as I drove my little pickup to the loading dock. I only did the math after they loaded me: 12 ounces each; three quarters of a pound; times 3,000 - more than a ton. I managed to scrape out of the freight yard to a friendly "u-store" facility, where I off-loaded 1,000 pounds. The rest went under my bed (which is about 3-1/2 feet off the ground).
Now what? I called all my natural building friends and offered them deep discounts (60% off the cover price) if they'd buy a case of books. Some of them did. In fact, quite a few did. I also got it onto Amazon. Not difficult, and a reliable and steady source of sales.
16. Another friend and author, Becky Bee (The Cob Builder's Handbook), suggested I get a distributor who could get it into bookstores and libraries more easily than I could. So I sent a copy off to Chelsea Green, which many related titles. They were delighted, and immediately offered a contract. I was wary. I called one of their distributed self-publishers, Joe Jenkins (The Humanure Handbook). He gave them good marks, so I signed on. By that time, I'd sold enough books that I'd almost made enough to pay back my brother. But he wasn't in a hurry, so I had the printer send a few thousand more to Chelsea.
17. Chelsea helped with marketing, sending me lists of reviewers and media contacts. By then, I'd gotten a couple of newspaper clips about an oven here or there. I got more reviews and a radio spot! Marketing is ongoing, but now that the book is out and selling, I'm hoping it will just keep selling, slow and steady. Meanwhile, I've still got space under my bed.
When I first wrote the book I was single and living pretty much hand-to-mouth. Now I'm married, busier, and more solvent (thanks in large part to the success of one book). I also have less time for shipping books. Fortunately, I can give more business to my distributor, and give them their pound of flesh - which amounts to thirty cents on the dollar. But that's not much for what they do: storing books, shipping, handling returns, and other details.
18. LESSONS LEARNED
Perhaps THE best advantage to self-publishing is being able to take your time. And you can enjoy yourself meanwhile (it helps to have a garden, so you won't starve or get bored). And if you go the pamphlet route, you don't need to lay out a lot of money on thousands of copies of a book that might not sell.
Big publishers have to make back all their development money in the first year or two of a book's lifetime. That means paying the author, the printer, the typesetters, the book designer and production staff, the marketing staff, distributor, etc. If a book doesn't find its niche quick, big outfits have to cut losses and move on.
It also seems that the bigger the industry gets, the less room there is for stuff that doesn't fit some existing niche - because it's the niche that makes it easy to sell. The problem is that many good books are good because they're unique - they don't just fit into a niche. And more and more publishers just can't take the time to hold onto a title while the author and any available marketing staff chisel out a new space for a new title.
19. FINALLY
My little oven book spawned another (Dig Your Hands in the Dirt: A Manual for Making Art Out of Earth), AND I've re-published a title my mom wrote in the 70s, called "Making Things." Originally published by Little, Brown, it sold steadily for 30 years until they gave it an awful, "modernized" cover -- which wasn't red! When they dropped it, I picked it up; it sells up to 100 copies a month! And it makes Hand Print Press into an almost "legitimate" publishing company. And I just put out a new edition of Build Your Own Earth Oven.
23. THINK: Would your time be better spent talking to family or neighbors?
