I’m definitely not the world expert on publishing and this post is based on my own personal experience and the decisions I made with regards to my self-publishing book project, The Anne Boleyn Collection.

I knew that I had to go for POD (print on demand) rather than vanity publishing because I knew people who had gone down the vanity publishing route and lost out big time. They paid to have their books printed and bound and had to order a stack of them upfront, which, of course, cost them a lot of money. They then had to store the boxes of books in their garage or attic and then find buyers for them. Financial stress, emotional stress and marriage problems caused by one’s spouse tripping over and then cursing the boxes of books preventing them from getting to the freezer. I think that the people I knew managed to get rid of the books in the end but it cost them financially and put them off self-publishing for life.

But publishing your book doesn’t have to be like that. Obviously, you can go down the traditional route and put together a book proposal, try and get a literary agent and then a publisher. I’m actually going down this route at the moment for family saga of the Boleyns. I have an agent who is interested and I have put together a book proposal for him to give me feedback on. But, sometimes a project just isn’t suitable for traditional mainstream publishing and that’s where POD comes in.

The main POD options are Lulu and Amazon’s Createspace. Both will allow you to print on demand, i.e. print a book when a customer orders one. No large upfront costs, no boxes of books filling your garage and no financial ruin. They also guide you through every step of the process – phew! I chose Createspace because I’ve always had good experiences with Amazon and because I knew people who had used them and I knew what the finished product was like, and I was impressed with the results. Obviously do your own research into the pros and cons of each service and choose what works best for you and your book.

I’m still in the process of self-publishing – I only finished the finished manuscript at the weekend – so I can only tell you my experience so far, but in my next post I’ll share the steps that Tim and I went through to get The Anne Boleyn Collection on to Createspace.

Tags : Createspace, Lulu, POD, print on demand
Categories : Print on demand, Self-publishing, The Anne Boleyn Collection