The Last Resort

by Caprice Hokstad
(San Diego, CA, USA )

Genre: Fantasy

Self-publishing was certainly not my first choice. I'm not "proud" of being self-published. I am proud that I've been careful when choosing print-on-demand companies that the contracts I've signed are 1)non-exclusive and 2)completely revocable. I have retained ALL rights, which means that if I ever had the chance to get a better publishing arrangement, I am free to do so.

The bad news is that I am all too aware how ridiculously improbable that chance is. You see, I have ALREADY tried. And tried. And tried. I did the Writers Market and the queries, synopses, and sample chapters. I have done it with publishers large and small, and I have done it with literary agents. I have a HUGE pile of rejections to prove it.

I refinanced my house to attend a writer's conference and meet an acquiring editor near the top of my WM hope list. I sent my sample chapters a month ahead of time so she could read them thoroughly and give written advice in addition to the six minutes of talk time I bought for a very steep price in addition to the attendance fees. I listened to her suggestions and spent two solid months rewriting my entire book to meet her specifications. I sent the revision back to her as a REQUESTED manuscript. After waiting twice as long as their guidelines suggest, I asked politely about my submission. She admitted she LOST it. I reprinted it and sent it a second time. Within two weeks, I got a generic rejection. All that, and I didn't even rate two sentences of personal explanation. "Thanks but no thanks. Get lost."

When you've exhausted all possibilities of getting a traditional publisher, what's left? Either chuck the manuscript into a drawer and let it rot, or publish it yourself. Since the former was unacceptable, I began looking into self-publishing as my only alternative to throwing away thousands of hours of work.

My first foray was truly SELF-publishing. I'd bought a laser printer when I was in the sample chapter/query/synopsis phase, just to make my submissions look professional. I learned (mostly by trial and error) how to reformat my manuscript. I took out the double spacing and changed the page size, font size, margins, and all the elements that make it look like a book rather than a manuscript. I bought high quality cotton paper and meticulously cut all the pages in half with a machete cutter. Then I printed my book with my HP Laserjet, 10 pages at a time: odd pages first, then flip and print the even sides. Presentation quality.

I packed the pages and drove to a book bindery in the middle of nowhere. As long as I did at least five at a time, they charged me about $12 a copy to even-up and straighten the pages, bind in a library-quality SEWN hardback, and stamp my name and the title, "The Duke's Handmaid" on the spine. I had several choices for color combinations; for plot-related reasons I chose black buckram cloth with silver foil stamping. Not fancy, but beautiful in its simplicity and it is VERY durable. Long after my paperbacks have turned to dust, these handmade hardbacks will look pristine. I sent two to the Library of Congress, along with the necessary paperwork for formal copyright. I've donated some of these to other libraries as well.

I only made about 40 copies this way; they were expensive. After paper, toner, and binding, the price was well over $20, without any royalty for the writing or any compensation for cutting, printing and driving the loose pages out to the bindery. I didn't have an ISBN, nor did I know how to get one without paying a LOT. I lacked a nice, marketable book jacket too. I couldn't get my book on Amazon or in bookstores. But I did sell a few just from advertising on my website. I gave away the first three chapters for FREE (still do) and then I offered the hardbacks and the .doc file as an eBook. I accepted payments by PayPal and packaged and mailed every copy personally.

I could hardly blame folks for not wanting to pay this much for a book when they had never heard of me. I kept hearing from people who wanted paperbacks. So I started looking for a way to get my book into paperback. I had quite a list of criteria for what I wanted from a Print-On-Demand company. Foremost was that they would not acquire ANY of my rights. I also wanted the finished paperbacks to sell as close to competitive as possible. Some of my criteria were based on false assumptions and misinformation, and those considerations factored into my final decision. I do NOT now recommend the POD company I chose back then. I have a nice long explanation I'm happy to share with anyone who is seriously considering Xulon Press, but I won't go into details here.

Xulon did several positive things for me. They got me an ISBN and internet listings. I had to wrestle with them and talk long distance to the CEO to get what I felt was promised after the amount of money I laid out, but I did finally get some acceptable cover art, along with FULL RIGHTS to use it in all promotions. The retail price was not as competitive as I wanted, but I bought 100 copies off the first-run at a good discount and then sold those at pennies above cost off my website, along with the hardbacks and eBooks. I charged for postage at cost but paid for bubble-wrap envelopes, which weren't cheap. If people bought paperbacks direct from me, they could get them for around 10 bucks, including shipping. I probably lost money but I didn't care, because I got the price down to a competitive level with other trade paperbacks in the genre.

Soon, though, Xulon raised the prices across the board. I could no longer come close to breaking even. Since Xulon did NOT have exclusive rights to publish "The Duke's Handmaid", I went to Lulu and produced a Second Edition. I used the art I paid so much for at Xulon and did the rest of the cover myself. I already formatted all the inside text myself, so that was no problem either. With Lulu, I can set my royalty as low as I want to maximize sales. I no longer have to try to keep up inventory and undersell retail. Lulu also takes care of the transactions and the mailing, so I don't have to pay the credit card fees or tramp off to the post office. They also converted my doc file to PDF so I could reach more people with the eBook. Oh, and Lulu also offers real, beautiful, full-color hardbacks. They're more expensive than paperbacks, but competitive with other publishers and still cheaper than my machete-cut, plain-covered library bindings. So Lulu makes offering nice hardbacks a possibility.

The sequel novel, "Nor Iron Bars a Cage" was published completely at Lulu. I paid an independent artist to do a scene from my book and then I added the title, back text, and spine myself. I even held a contest online to vote for the best overall cover design. I paid MUCH less to publish my second book, and this time I got so much more. The ISBN is in my own name, not Lulu's. The art is much more relevant and infinitely closer to what I wanted. The book is longer, so it costs a little more, but that would have happened no matter where I went. I am definitely NOT in this for the money. I merely want my books read as widely as possible.

Let me make a few things clear to any author who is considering self-publishing:

Using a Print-On-Demand company will NOT help you get published at a traditional publisher. Unless your sales are super-phenomenal, you're STILL going to be "nobody" to them. Collect rejections and satisfy yourself BEFORE you self-publish. If you think the ms might have life any other way, then don't go POD. If leaving any specific story in a drawer would not bother you, either because you don't feel strongly about it or because you have so many other mss to work on that losing one is insignificant, then don't bother with POD. Read the warnings at http://www.sfwa.org/beware/printondemand.html If you're at all tempted by PublishAmerica, read this: http://www.sfwa.org/members/TravisTea/backstory.htm and this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A25187-2005Jan20 Take internet gossip with a grain of salt but ignore it at your own risk.

I am not "proud" to be self-published, but I do have a few fans who make me feel like giving them books this way is better than leaving my babies to rot. If that's where you are too, then check it out. Research what the different companies charge, what you get for the money, what, if anything you would lose (who has publication rights and for how long) and if you care, what they charge for books. Look at the books they sell. Look at the page counts. Are their prices competitive? If they do the covers, do they use a template or is it custom? Buy a book from them. Make sure the binding and paper is decent. Check the print quality. Check the editing only if you know for sure an author used it (it ALWAYS costs extra and not all POD pubs offer it).

I like Lulu best, but Outskirts and Infinity rank up there. If money was no object, they might be even closer. Wherever you go, be very wary of extra services like "marketing kits" or "press kits" or promotional items like bookmarks, postcards, or business cards. Most often, you can buy these things elsewhere much cheaper.

And lastly, be aware how extremely difficult it is to market self-published books. When companies will print anything for a price, we shouldn't be surprised that much of what gets published is pure dreck. Bookstores know this. Readers know this. Don't delude yourself that your brilliant manuscript will change these facts.

Visit Caprice's site.