Two Models of Self Publishing

For an author looking to self-publish today, the choices are endless and varied – print book vs e-book, one company vs another, print-on-demand vs bulk. The information available can often be confusing to somebody not well versed with publishing industry nuances. While we have doled out a lot of gyan about various steps of self publishing, I think it is time to take a step back and have a look at the bigger picture.

Let us say you have decided to enroll some help in your endeavour of self-publishing. In general all the companies you will come across fall in two basic categories:

1. Package Publishing
2. Pick and Choose Publishing

Package Publishing

As is obvious from the name, companies offering package publishing will typically have one or more pre-defined packages. These packages will include all the service required to convert your raw manuscript into the final book. The extent to which the author is involved in the process will depend on the exact package chosen and also on the author’s willingness and interest. These companies are supposed to work just like traditional publishers, except that author pays for everything. Typically there is no choice of opting only for certain steps from the packages and doing the others yourself.

Pick and Choose publishing

Pick and Choose publishing, on the other hand, means that the author can decide which of the services she wants to avail from the self publishing company and which are the tasks she would do herself.  The author can, for example, decide that she wants to do editing herself or get it done by her friend, but will hire the self publishing company’s services for designing. She can combine the different services from different providers if she wants. Here the author has more control and choices, but she is also responsible for learning about various tasks and making the most suitable decision for each of them.

Both the models have their pros and cons and which particular model is fit for a particular author depends on the kind of book, author’s skills and knowledge of various publishing tasks, the time she can spare for her book, the amount of control she wants and her budget. Following may be useful if you are trying to make this decision for yourself.

Beware

There is one thing authors should be aware of before choosing any self publishing model. Do not get carried off by the marketing and distribution support promised by any of the providers. Many Package Publishing companies offer what looks like a very good marketing and distribution support. But delve deeper into the exact arrangements. Having “your book available to retailers for order” and having“retailers actually ordering your book” are two very different things. Most of the times the promised distribution support is nothing more than an entry into the various books related databases. So, your book is available to be ordered by retailers, if they decide to. It’s a big “if”. Point is, irrespective of what kind of self publishing you go for, and irrespective of what any company seems to offer, in the self publishing world, you are on your own as far as marketing and distribution is concerned.

Anyway, coming back to the business models, a self publishing company may offer one or both of these models. For example, Lulu.com offers both kinds of models while Author House only offers package publishing.

What about Pothi.com?

At Pothi.com we have focused on “Pick and Choose” model of self publishing. This model gives maximum freedom and choice to the authors. It also ties in nicely to the “Do It Yourself” (DIY) ethos that all of us at Pothi.com really cherish. The very essence of self in self-publishing is the control and flexibility that creators get on their creations. Packages also have their own advantages. They act as a representative set of publishing tasks that must be taken care of in order for successful publishing of a book. Authors without mush prior experience can use them as a starting point.

In the spirit of transparency and free choice, all the specifications of files to be submitted for publishing are available on the Pothi.com website. The authors can, therefore, decide not to spend even a single Rupee on the services offered and do it entirely on their own. Once they prepare the files according to the specifications, they can submit them and have it listed on Pothi.com’s online store for purchase.

There is an option of going for editing, designing and other services if they want to. There are no predefined packages. They can decide what they want to avail and what they would rather do on their own.

The Do it Yourself (DIY) way

Coming back to the DIY way, we feel that it is not enough to give the authors just one time choice. Since a lot of our users are doing it for the first time, the system should be quite tolerant and permissive of experimentation. Authors should be able to experiment around with their book, in terms of content, design, pricing, information etc. until they are satisfied.

Now this experimentation should be

• Convenient for the authors
• Cost effective – each experimentation should not cost the authors a fortune – preferably nothing at all where possible

We at Pothi.com believe that the way to achieve this is to offer the authors a technologically enabled “Do it Yourself” platform, where they can change and experiment with their books as much as they like. “Do it Yourself” also means that the company providing the platform does not have to put somebody on work from their side every time an author is trying to experiment. Hence, it is possible to keep the cost of experimentation very little or even zero. Yantra – our free cover designing tool and BookSmith – our blog2book tool are two such efforts from our side which make the cover designing and putting together of a simple book a very easy process and hence allow users to experiment and tinker around.

Also behind the scene, we have always tried to keep our publishing processes such that enabling DIY is possible. In the new year, we are now taking steps towards making our platform more and more open and DIY. Some of the things have already been enabled and others will come in time. We will write about them here as they come up. You can also sign up for our newsletter which apart from these updates, sends out information about coupon codes, featured books and more!

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Related links from Pothi.com

• How to go about publishing a book through Pothi.com
• Specifications for preparing Interior File
• Specifications for preparing Cover File
• Services offered by Pothi.com