Deciding to self publish my latest book meant that I had the freedom to innovate and experiment.
As well as a normal book, I also decided to create a mappazine, a Kindle book, a coffee table book and an iPad book. I ran out of time to make the audio book, but I’mll do it when I get back from rowing the Atlantic in March.
In this video interview with Joanna (@thecreativepenn) from The Creative Penn I discuss my experiments in print publishing. I hope you find it interesting.
If you own a Kindle, or have the Kindle app on your phone, please can I ask you to download the free sample chapters from There Are Other Rivers? Just click here.
I think experimenting with multiple ways of printing can open up a lot of opportunities. Thanks for sharing!
Well done on getting the book out there. I really enjoyed the mappazine but one big question which isn’t answered with the video interview with Joanna ‘is there any money in printed books for the self publisher?’
The short answer (for I leave in 6 hours to row the Atlantic and have not packed) is “yes”.
The slightly longer answer is “yes, if you have a way of reaching an audience…”
Hi Nick,
I’ll answer for Alastair since he is a little busy right now :)
Print books for the self-publisher seem to work best if you have a physical platform to sell them – so for Al, he has speaking gigs at which he can sell physical books (and maps) at the back of the room.
I am also an indie publisher but I have found print basically breaks-even – in that I price my print on demand books as low as possible so I don’t make much money on them – I also don’t sell very many. So for me, print is almost a vanity product. I am currently making a decision whether to bother with print at all for my novels since I sell 97% ebooks.
So basically it differs depending on the author’s platform. I hope that helps!
Thanks, Joanna