Sponsor's Message

Although I have a publisher keen to run with this book, I'm beginning to wonder whether taking a 10% royalty on a whole lot of ink-stained tree-pulp is the right way to go.

Recent news which indicates that blogging has become "mainstream" and is attracting the interest of traditional publishing houses suggests that maybe doing the whole thing myself might be a better option, putting me well ahead of the game.

Yes, there are plenty of pitfalls and not having a physical presence in bookstores around the world could be a major disadvantage -- but do the benefits of using the Net outweigh that?

Now have your say Got something to say about today's column, or want to see what others think?  Visit The Forums While you're here, why not visit the Aardvark Hall of Shame and perhaps make your own nomination. 7

The simplest way to self-publish would be to simply upload the book to CafePress and allow them to handle all the printing, binding, fulfillment, etc -- leaving me free to just bank the cheques as they arrive.

That option could hike my earnings per book to around 30% of the retail, quite an improvement over the traditional publishing model but I wonder whether CafePress has the capacity to handle things if sales really take off.

Another option is to go totally electronic -- simply selling downloadable copies from a website.

This has the potential to provide a margin in excess of 90% the cover-price while also allowing the retail to be reduced, hopefully resulting in increased sales.

The downside of going totally electronic is the ease with which such a publication could be illegally reproduced and distributed on P2P networks or similar. That could really eat into sales.

Of course I could always scour the Net for a good printer and have huge numbers of the book printed in the conventional manner then do the whole sales/distribution thing myself -- but that's probably the least attractive option.

Quite frankly I have no desire to become a pulp-media publisher and I doubt I'd be any good at it. My preferred medium is the Net.

Fortunately I have a few months left to make up my mind - the final chapters of the book has yet to be written. They will contain the results of a little "testing" (and the reaction that follows) that has had to be put on the back burner for the past three years :-)

Right now it's looking far more attractive to just go with a mainstream pulp publisher (and that advance looks attractive) -- but the potential of the Net is still awfully alluring.

I'd like to hear from readers...

Have you ever bought an ebook? Do you prefer dead trees to electrons?

Can, thanks to the power of the Net, self-publishing become as successful as relying on a mainstream publisher?

Free Advertising!
Yes, while I sort out the issue of sponsorship, I'm offering loyal Aardvark readers the chance to have their venture advertised for free on these pages.

If you send me your 150x150 banner (no more than 20KB) and a URL to point at, I'll put it in a rotation to appear in the area currently allocated to sponsorship.

Because of my government-imposed state of impoverishment, I won't be charging for this exposure and there's no obligation to anyone -- but neither are their any promises ;-)

Drop me a line if you'd like to take advantage of this.

Did you notice
As eagle-eyed readers will have noticed, sponsorship of this fine blog/column is up for grabs.

Those who have already made enquiries about sponsoring Aardvark should hear back from me this week - and anyone else who might like to do so should drop me a line ASAP.

Tell us all and see what others have to say in The Aardvark Forums

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