newsletterapril2006

Writer's Digest Magazine has selected Writers On The Rise as one of their 101 Best Web Sites for Writers in 2005.

I am writing this from the road. In fact, while sitting in a traffic jam driving north on I-5 near Everett, Washington. My husband Jason is driving, my daughter Samantha is sleeping, and I am reviving an old passion: Writing on a laptop.

What has taken me so long to jump back on the laptop bandwagon? As I sit here typing, I haven’t the foggiest idea. But I’m sure glad I climbed back on board now. That’s right, Writer Mama is due in one month. Nothing like a deadline to get the creative juices flowing, right?

Actually, they’ve been flowing all along, it’s just that a book is a much larger project than what I’m used to and it’s easy to get my ideas tied into knots if I think about them too much. But the beauty of writing on a laptop (as I’m sure many of you know) is that it’s easy to get some fresh air blowing through my sometimes-cramped brain. I am not sure whether or not this breeze is going to improve my writing, but it sure feels good.

Writers suffer from many bad habits and I am prone to all of them: procrastination, disorganization, distraction, overwork, and underwork, just to name a few. You may be surprised to hear my solution to bad habits… It’s not to try to “lose” them or “get rid of” them. Rather it's to remember good habits and put those in motion to override the bad ones. For example, I am a big Artist’s Way fan going way back. And I’ve always found that the three simple tools for creatives that Julia Cameron recommends work well for me.

These three magic wands are Morning Pages, Artist Dates and Walking. Morning Pages are three pages of stream-of-consciousness writing. Artist's Dates are a couple of hours of frivolous fun. And I’m pretty sure everyone knows what walking is. The key to creative unblocking, for me, is to keep finding my own rhythm in the face of new challenges and circumstances. And luckily these tools work so well that the payoff (and the relief) is immediate, as well as lasting.

Try them instead of, or in addition to, any of your bad habits and you'll soon feel a cool breeze blowing through your brain just as surely as I do now that we are beyond the traffic jam and zipping up the highway en route to our destination!

I'd like to introduce you to our grammar guru, Elizabeth Short. She'll be helping us improve the quality of our writing through her monthly column "Polish Your Prose." Kristin Bair has the month off, as she's just arrived in Shanghai, China (a bit dizzy and jet-lagged) where she'll be living for the next two years. And as a special treat, Moira Allen, from Writing-World.com teaches us how to revive our muse by creating a personal publishing project on Lulu.com. If you have ever considered self-publishing of any kind, you won't want to miss this three-part article!

I hope this issue will shake some of the droop out of your delayed dreams and put some spring back where it belongs – in your plan for a successful and pleasurable writing career.

LAST CHANCE UNTIL FALL! WRITING AND PUBLISHING NONFICTION ARTICLES CLASS – APRIL 12TH

Want to learn how to write for publications on topics that engage you? In this e-mail course, you will develop confidence by writing and submitting an article at the end of our six weeks together. You can try your pen at the three most marketable types of nonfiction articles—personal essays, how-to articles and interviews—and polish and submit one of your drafts by the end of the class. The class workbook is 60-pages long and includes weekly questionnaires, check-ins, resources, inspiration and assignments to advance your writing career. Two detailed reviews of your draft-in-progress are included at weeks three and six. Visit Writing Classes with Christina Katz for more information.

Q: I enjoy the writing part but I hate the marketing side of the business. I think I’m just too lazy to write queries. It seems like twice the work. Any suggestions?

A: I’ll be the first to admit that writing queries can be tedious and even outright boring. I always thought it was funny that the big magazines want a query and three samples of your writing, but not the actual submission itself.

I have three pieces of advice to get around writing full-length queries. The first is to submit your article to smaller publications. Most don’t require queries – you can actually send the entire manuscript – and usually allow you to submit by email.

The second suggestion is to develop a relationship with an editor so that you don’t need to send queries, but rather just a quick, informal email. Once you work with an editor a few times, you can often just send a sentence or two to see if they’re interested in your idea or not.

My last piece of advice is to submit shorter pieces to get both your momentum and your credentials going. Greeting cards, fillers and flash fiction are great ways to avoid queries – at least to start. But eventually, if you want to make the big bucks, you may have to just suck it up and write a few darn good queries. Once you get a $1,000 check, those queries might not seem so bad!

Q: I’m totally disorganized and I think it’s ruining my writing career. What advice do you have for organizing my computer-based and hard copy files?

A: The computer side of things is a bit hard to answer because everyone has a different method that works for them. There are some software programs that help you keep track of your submissions, like Quick Query Tracker (worldwidefreelance.com/qqt/). I know some other writers that use Excel, but I prefer and old-fashioned Microsoft Word document. It’s easy to use “find” or “find and replace” if I change the name of a submission later.

As for the hard-copy papers, I have several filing cabinets that I use, including folders for regular clients, one-offs, contracts, receipts, writer’s guidelines and the like. I go through these every January and toss the papers I don’t need anymore. For those of you pack rats, here’s a simple solution to paperwork: ask yourself whether the paper is easily replaced. If you can get the writer’s guidelines again off a Web site, for example, toss it. If it’s a paper that came from the government, like a tax statement, keep it. I read that you won’t use 99% of the papers you keep anyway, so why let the clutter hold you hostage?

Wendy Burt is a full-time freelance writer and editor in Colorado Springs, Colo. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Writer, Writer’s Digest, Byline and Family Circle. Autographed copies of her two books, “Oh, Solo Mia! The Hip Chick’s Guide to Fun for One” (April 2001, McGraw-Hill) and “Work It, Girl! 101 Tips for the Hip Working Chick” (June 2003, McGraw-Hill) are available through http://BurtCreations.com.

To learn about Eric Maisel's Deep Writing Workshop in Paris on July 10th – July 13th, Click Here.

Featured Writer On The Rise

Yesterday I wrote a book. Today I "published" it. In about two weeks, I'll be able to present a copy to my husband for our 22nd anniversary.

Granted, it's hardly a ground-breaking work. In fact, it's a 25-page "autobiography" of the family teddy bear, who (for reasons I won't go into) has endured more costume changes than a Rockette. It certainly won't make (or change) publishing history. What makes it significant, however, is that it probably wouldn't have been written if not for Lulu.com.

Lulu.com offers print-on-demand publishing, and that type of publishing is not for everyone. Brenda Rollins noted in The Writer, for example, that POD is well-suited for "family histories, technical books, memoirs, recipe collections, manuals and out-of-print books that authors want to revive." Victoria Strauss notes on the Writer Beware website that POD works well for writers "who just want to produce a few dozen copies of a family memoir or recipe book for private distribution."

Until last year, I never thought of myself as "that type of writer." In my view, writing that wasn't commercially publishable (i.e., that one couldn't be paid for) was scarcely worth doing. At the same time, I was becoming increasingly aware that my writing life held little joy. Personal projects, such as a novel begun in 2001, have been perpetually "back-burnered" by paying assignments. Even while I advised other writers to "follow their dreams," I was ignoring my own.

But God has a way of getting one's attention in unexpected ways. For me, it was through the "scanning project that will never die"–a summer-long endeavor to convert my family photo archives to digital. Those archives included hundreds of family photos of the "little farmhouse in the big, dark woods" of Mendocino, where I spent nearly every weekend as a child. My niece was developing an interest in her family heritage, so I planned to give her copies of the photos–but I also wanted her to know what they were about. And thus was born "Mendocino Memories," a 200-page memoir.

Along the way, I rediscovered something: Writing can be fun! In fact, it can be considerably more fun when it isn't tailored to the constraints of someone else's requirements or word limits, or even by the question, "will anyone actually want to read this?" What mattered was simply that I wanted to write it.

Still, I didn't want to hand my niece a CD of photos and a sheaf of manuscript pages. So I decided to put my words and the family photos together into a "book." Hardly a radical concept: people have been self-publishing their memoirs for decades. What is radical, however, is that this is perhaps the first time in history when one can do so without breaking the bank.

A decade ago, about the only way an author could get a memoir or family history into print was to pay tens of thousands of dollars to a subsidy publisher. With the advent of POD technology, the price of "DIY publishing" dropped dramatically, but could still run anywhere from $600 to nearly $2000 through services like Xlibris and iUniverse. Plus, one still had to pay extra (often quite a bit extra) for every copy of the book itself.

What attracted me (and thousands of other authors) to Lulu.com is the opportunity to create a book for practically nothing. Lulu.com charges no set-up or "processing" fees; you pay only for the copies that you buy, at a flat fee of $4–plus 8¢ per page for black and white printing, or 15¢ for color. If you wish to offer your book for sale, you simply determine the royalty you wish to charge over and above the basic cost. You can also sell your book as an electronic download.

There is, of course, a catch. Lulu.com is free precisely because you aren't paying someone else to format your book or design a cover or catch your typos. While the company can refer you to independent graphic artists and designers, the burden of creating the final "published" product rests entirely upon you. Your book must be completely camera-ready (as a PDF file) by the time you initiate your publishing project.

Once you've designed your book, however, the publishing process itself is ridiculously simple. You'll be asked to set up an account; then you just click the "publish" button to start a new project. You'll be required to upload your book as a PDF file, and your front and back covers as JPG files (or, you can compose a back cover through one of Lulu.com's "help wizards"). Answer a few questions, choose a font for the spine, set your royalty if you're planning to sell the book, upload a sample chapter if you desire, and you're done!

Having reviewed many POD titles as a contest judge, I can say that Lulu.com's print quality meets or exceeds that of other POD services. Color publications are printed on a nice coated white stock; black and white publications are printed on a light buff stock (though I'd prefer white). The cover stock holds up better than that of any other POD book I've seen; most POD covers tend to start curling after the book has been opened a few times. The quality of interior color photos is adequate but not brilliant (and sometimes on the muddy side); I found that the photos in the black and white version of my memoir came out more clearly.

For the writer who wants to share a personal work with family and friends, however, the quality is more than adequate–and the price is right. And if you're at all like me, you may find that the opportunity to turn your writing into something that looks and feels like a high-quality printed book may be just the inspiration you need to get back to the keyboard. Now that the tale of my teddy bear is behind me, I'm looking forward to my next "just for fun" writing project: The biography of our recently departed and much beloved cat. Illustrated, of course!

Moira Allen has been writing professionally for more than 25 years, and is the host of the popular writing website Writing-World.com. She is the author of several books on writing.

Her most recent Lulu.com publication is How to Write for Magazines. This 132-page book walks you through the process of developing a marketable article, from brainstorming ideas to choosing the right markets. By the end of the book, you will have an article idea "ready to go" -- and a query letter to send to the first editor on your list.

Remember when that story you worked so hard on got killed? When an editor rejected your pitch after you spent hours on it? I bet you do. But what about the high notes of your writing career? They may be harder to recall.

That's why I suggest you start an Inspiration File. Mine includes notes, cards, letters, and emails I’ve collected over nine years. There's a note from an editor thanking me for a "great job" on one of my first stories, fan letters from readers of my novel, and a congratulations card from my husband when I sold my first book.

If I'm struggling with freelancing or having doubts about my choice of career, I take a look through my Inspiration File to focus on my accomplishments instead of my rejections. I suggest you do the same. Don’t focus on how far you have to go–instead, celebrate the distance you've already come.

Author, speaker and consultant Kelly James-Enger is a certified personal trainer and the author of books including Small Changes, Big Results: A 12-Week Action Plan to a Better Life (with Ellie Krieger, R.D.) and Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer’s Guide to Making More Money. Visit http://www.becomebodywise.com for free articles about freelancing and more information about her.

CHRISTINA KATZ has a parenting tip in the “It Worked For Me!” section of Parents Magazine this May. She also has an eight-page home tour in the May issue of Country Sampler. See some of her scouting shots below in “Adventures In Writing.”

KELLY HUFFMAN continues to review theater productions for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. She also published a feature on women's fitness opportunities in the quarterly newspaper Destination Issaquah.

LORI RUSSELL published her feature story, "Women for Winesense: Gatherings Around the Gorge” and an artist profile, “Victor Johnson: Making Music & Fun for the Young at Heart” in the Spring issue of Columbia Gorge Magazine. Her article, “The Beat Goes On,” about Northwest drumming group, Laafi Bala, appears in the April issue of Ruralite magazine.

SAGE COHEN launched a blog at http://blog.myspace.com/sagesaidso where she strives to distill moments of grace from ordinary daily occurrences. Her story "The Truth About Debbie and Dr. Fernandez" will appear in the April issue of Black Lamb.

LAUREN FRITZEN published "Pavlo, 'The Greek God of Guitar,' in Benefit Concert for Pacific Arts Association" in the April issue of Entertainment News Northwest.

The subtitle of this book is “A Guided Journey for the Creative Soul” and what a languid, multi-layered trip. It invites you to take a journey on which you look closely at Paris and metaphorically at your writing career. Maisel has written an inviting, delicious treat for the right side of your brain, as he urges the artist in each of us to step to the front of our personal priorities.

Maisel is a prolific author and a creativity coach; in this book you see both personas at work. He says Paris is “…the place you go when you want to put your creative life first.” And don’t worry about not speaking French. Just plan to start each day by focusing on your writing.

I love the idea of flaneurie, or walking meditation. Can you tell us more?

Urban walking captures two different but related principles: being in the midst of teeming action and being completely alone and oneself. The writer wants life; the writer also wants solitude. Flaneurie, the French art of city strolling, is the perfection of that ideal, where an artist gets to simultaneously observe and meditate as she flows along in urban tumult.

I sit and write. Many writers and would-be writers feel too distracted or self-conscious to write in public places, but I feel settled and becalmed by the café experience. Nowadays I write at home most of the time; but especially when I want to enter into a certain dreamy reverie that is ideal for inviting new work, I head to my local café.

Please talk a bit about your recommendations about exploring and avoiding the tourist approach to Paris (and writing).

The Paris that matters is the Paris through which you stroll as a flaneur. The literary sights are irrelevant and the tourist sites are irrelevant: you as a writer drinking in Paris and stopping in this park or at that café to write are what are important. The tourist cares when Notre Dame was built; the writer writes in the shade that Notre Dame casts.

How does having a risky experience help "to unlock the trunk" of our creativity?

Many writers unwittingly want to have a “safe experience” with their writing: they want to know what their book is about before writing it; they want their book to settle down and zip along nicely, and so on. These desires are creativity killers. If you take the risk out of the experience, you will have no experience.

Could you say more about urging writers to tackle difficult projects and prepare for producing lots of inferior work?

Writers have dreams, and those dreams are often about ambitious work—work that scares them to think about. Since it scares them, they shelve their reams and opt for “easier writing” (not that any writing is easy). Do the writing that matches your dreams, even if that means that you make horrible messes and produce unreadable manuscripts. The ultimate goal may be to produce good work, but the immediate goal is to reach high enough, wide enough, and deep enough.

I have five or six coming out over the next year or so. One is A Writer’s San Francisco (New World Library), another is What Would Your Character Do? (personality quizzes for the characters in your novel, from Writer’s Digest Books), a third is Toxic Criticism (McGraw-Hill), and a fourth is Creativity for Life (New World Library). The other two slip my mind at this moment, but I’m sure they’re wonderful! I also have several other projects percolating—stay tuned.

Susan W. Clark is a freelance writer and photographer. Her work regularly appears in publications such as Capital Press, In Good Tilth, Permaculture Activist, the Canby Herald, and Small Farmer’s Journal. She was recently recognized as Author of the Year by the editor of In Good Tilth. She co-founded Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT) and is editor of the quarterly journal SALT of the Earth. She lives with her husband near Canby, Oregon.

Improving Your Writing Habits

OK, so I don't know of any official 12-step programs for bad writing habits. But, I do know that the first step to recovery is admitting I have a problem.

What's your worst writing habit? (It's OK to be honest; you're reading this silently to yourself, right?) Do you use too many adverbs? Do you embrace the comma splice? Are you forever using "to" instead of "too" or "lose" when you really mean "loose"? Does your writing tell rather than show? Do you use POV properly? Do you know what POV is ("Point of View") and do you use it consistently or does your POV change every paragraph...or even within paragraphs? Are run-on sentences your bad habit?

One of the easiest ways to improve your writing skills is by reading books on the topic of trouble. A recent search at my favorite online bookseller for "writing skills" turned up over 4,000 titles; as you can see, there isn't a shortage of book options. You can narrow your search by adding the genre (fiction, short story, nonfiction, etc.) or get specific (grammar, point of view). And, don't forget about your local library. You'll find lots of titles just waiting to be checked out.

Classes are another excellent way to improve your writing skills. The added benefit of classes is the social aspect they bring to your life. The financial investment for classes ranges from expensive, traditional degrees (bachelors, masters, masters of fine arts, doctorate) to inexpensive community college courses and workshops. Other options include online courses, personal writing coaches, single-day writer's workshops, and long-weekend writing conferences. Like books, courses can be broad topics or problem specific.

Not all books and classes will be right for you. When investing in your education do your homework by reading reviews, talking to fellow writers who have read the book or taken the course you're interested in, or participating in online forums where you can ask questions.

With a little study, anyone can recover from poor writing habits. Just pick a trouble spot, admit you need help, and learn how to fix it.

Gregory A. Kompes (Kompes.com) is a writer, photographer, and professional speaker. He is the author of the bestseller 50 Fabulous Gay-Friendly Places to Live (fabcities.com) and The Endorsement Quest (endorsementquest.com), founder of The GLBT Authors' Project (glbtauthors.com) and Fabulist Flash Publishing (FabulistFlashPublishing.com), editor of The Fabulist Flash (FabulistFlash.com), an informative newsletter for writers, and produces a line of art cards and gifts. Gregory is a graduate of Columbia University, NY.

Does the April tax deadline leave you bursting with frustration? Great. Take your frustration out on the boxes and packaging that offices seem to collect.

Susan W. Clark is a freelance writer and photographer. Her work regularly appears in publications such as Capital Press, In Good Tilth, Permaculture Activist, the Canby Herald, and Small Farmer’s Journal. She was recently recognized as Author of the Year by the editor of In Good Tilth. She co-founded Oregon Sustainable Agriculture Land Trust (OSALT) and is editor of the quarterly journal SALT of the Earth. She lives with her husband near Canby, Oregon.

Three Ways to Learn by Immersion

By Kelly Huffman

You can hardly swing a cat without hitting an award-winning author at this intensive 8-day conference. Admission is selective (writing samples are required), and workshops are limited to 12 participants each. Located on 60 woodsy acres just outside Boston, it’s a complete immersion in all things literary—with one night off for dancing. http://www.pmc.edu/solstice/index.html

Writers have been meeting at this conference since 1985 for intensive 3-hour workshops, one-on-one sessions, and strolls through this beautiful southwestern city. This year’s speakers include Judy Reeves, author of A Writer's Book of Days: A Spirited Companion & Lively Muse for the Writing Life, and Brian Kiteley, author of The 3 A.M. Epiphany, a collection of fiction exercises. http://www.santafewritersconference.com/index.html

With rave reviews from Fannie Flagg, Sidney Sheldon, and Elmore Leonard, the Santa Barbara Writers Conference prides itself on offering a great place for fledgling writers to hone their craft. Each day offers over 30 different workshops in everything from pitching editors to punching up your humor writing. Situated in a beautiful, family-friendly resort overlooking the Pacific Ocean, this conference might be the writer’s perfect working vacation. http://www.sbwc.org/conference_summer.php

Kelly Huffman is a freelance writer and independent events planner based in Seattle. She contributes reviews and arts news to the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the website Theatermania.com, and writes for the local lifestyle publication Destination Issaquah.

"Lost Love and the Lessons of Canning " by Debby Bull

Reviewed By Cathy Belben

Instead of wallowing in grief when her long-term relationship ended, writer Debby Bull invested her energies in a unique therapy. Recognizing that “it [is] the ending and not the beginning of some relationships that ought to restore your sense of hope,” she decided to work through her sadness by learning to preserve food. In her memoir, Blue Jelly: Love Lost and the Lessons of Canning, Bull explains, “Just because this last thing didn’t work out, it doesn’t mean all your dreams will end in a big mess. Canning demonstrates this principle.”

Bull’s memoir is hopeful and inspiring and fun—just the recipe for writers in a rut. As she leads us through her healing and homemaking, Bull offers a unique glimpse into how we can create our own happiness by learning something new. She did—and she wrote a book in the process. What adventures await writers who are daring enough to take on new projects—even simple ones? We may find, like Bull did, that we have untapped talents and sources of joy.

Cathy Belben is a Bellingham, Washington native whose writing has appeared in numerous publications, including Bookmarks magazine, School Library Journal, Bicycle Paper, and Writers on the Rise. A high school English teacher and librarian for the past fifteen years, she recently took a year’s leave from her job to write for television. For information about Veronica Mars, go to http://www.upn.com/shows/veronica_mars/.

Netiquette: Avoid Bad E-habits to Make the Most of E-mail

By Sharon Miller Cindrich

E-mail has changed the writer’s world, expanding our writing communities, networks and opportunities like never before. While e-mail lends itself to a more casual writing context, minding your e-manners is especially essential for those of us regularly represented by the written word. Whether you conduct interviews via e-mail, converse with editors or share tips with fellow writers, make sure you follow this e-mail netiquette to avoid the most common bad habits associated with e-mail.

Delete other e-mails listed. If an e-mail has been forwarded, make sure to delete any other e-mail addresses listed in those forwards. If you’re sending an e-mail to a group of folks who don’t know each other, use your blind copy function to list the e-mails in order to protect your recipients' privacy.

Weigh the worth. E-mails that contain promises of good luck, fun animation or even jokes might motivate some folks, but to most busy writers, they are annoyances. Before passing along an e-mail, make sure it will be of value to the recipient.

Describe your attachment. With all those viruses floating around, folks can get leery about opening attached documents. In casual communication, cut and paste documents you want to include below your e-mail note. If you must send an attachment, make sure to acknowledge the attachment in your e-mail and describe the content.

Use smileys – :) – for personal relationships, only. When you’re conducting business with an interviewee or conversing with an editor, avoid using smileys and net lingo shortcuts. It just doesn't look professional.

Pick up the phone or write a note. A phone call connects your voice with your writing and shows that you’re making the time and effort to communicate, as does a hand written note. Use these oldies but goodies to follow up after an e-mail and make a personal connection.

Sharon Miller Cindrich is a freelance writer whose work has been published nationally in magazines and newspapers around the country including The Chicago Tribune, Parents Magazine, and The Writer. She is a Contributing Editor at FamilyFun Magazine and writes a bimonthly humor column for West Suburban Living Magazine in the Chicago Suburbs. She is a regular contributor to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Lifestyle section and Metroparent Magazine. Her book E-Parenting: Get Plugged In to Raise Safe, Smart Kids is due out from Random House at the end of the year. Read more about Sharon at http://www.mediabistro.com/sharoncindrich.

Adventures In Writing!

Here are a handful of the photos I submitted to an editor at Country Sampler magazine in order to land a feature assignment on the beautiful Beebe home in Blaine, Washington. I pitched this story several times and was turned down a few times by mail before receiving a phone call acceptance from the editor at Country Sampler. Furthermore, she referred me to the editor at a sister publication, Country Business, and I landed the same story with a different slant there, as well. Although circumstances prevented this second article from completion, Editor #2 gave me another assignment when they needed a writer in my area. Another example of how perseverence pays off in this business!

Polish Your Prose: Eliminate the Passive Voice

Passive voice forces the reader to play hide-and-seek with meaning. Replace passive sentences (the word by is a notorious red flag) with active ones and watch the real subject strut from the shadows. An added bonus—active voice usually yields a lower word count.

Example: In summer, many locally grown vegetables are offered by the farmers market.

Revision: In summer, the farmers market offers many locally grown vegetables.

Elizabeth Short is a freelance writer, editor, and graphic designer with a passion for helping small businesses clarify and broadcast unique marketing messages (www.write-design.biz). Her freelance articles have appeared in numerous publications including Family Business, Pacific Yachting and The Bellingham Weekly. Elizabeth divides her time between Bellingham, Washington and southeast Alaska where she and her husband commercial fish on their salmon troller, Bertha R.

August 5: "Build Expertise and Experience Writing for Newspapers, Magazines and Online"

For the writer who wants to share a personal work with family and friends the quality of a Lulu.com book is more than adequate–and the price is right. And if you're at all like me, you may find that the opportunity to turn your writing into something that looks and feels like a high-quality printed book may be just the inspiration you need to get back to the keyboard. Now that the tale of my teddy bear is behind me, I'm looking forward to my next "just for fun" writing project: The biography of our recently departed and much beloved cat. Illustrated, of course!

While I've just made a case for POD publishing as a means of turning "personal" writings, such as memoirs and family histories, into printed books, the question many authors ask is "what about books you want to sell?" Since Lulu.com offers a virtually free service, isn't this the ideal solution for getting one's book out to the general public?

To this question, I would answer with a very cautious "maybe" followed by "in most cases, probably not." While everyone has undoubtedly heard of one or two POD "success stories," the sad truth is that the market statistics for POD titles are pretty dismal. For example, in 2003, Xlibris circulated a promotion declaring that it had published 9000 books since 1997, and sold 300,000 copies. Big numbers, until you start punching your calculator and realize that this means an average sale of 33 copies per title. Out of iUniverse's 17,000 titles published by 2004, only 84 sold more than 500 copies in the first year.

While POD companies declare that all their books can be purchased in bookstores, what this really means is that they can be ordered through any bookstore -- as can any book with an ISBN. Most bookstores will not, however, actually stock POD titles because the profit margin is too small (POD publishers are not able to provide the deep discounts of traditional print publishers, and many titles cost $15 or more just to produce), and because unsold copies cannot be returned.

Even if you have a ready-made niche market for a book, and a means of reaching or perhaps even personally distributing your title to that market, it's difficult to make a profit with POD. While a print cost of $8 per book may not sound like much, it's too high to offer significant discounts on quantity orders.

Thus, I still produce my one self-published title, Coping with Sorrow on the Loss of Your Pet, through a short-run book printer. The amount of work I have to do is the same: I still have to provide a camera-ready PDF file of my book. I have to pay for several hundred copies up front (I usually buy 400 at a time, which is about all I can fit in my closet), but my per-book print cost is only $2.75. Since my asking price is $12 through my website or $12.95 on Amazon.com, this gives me a nice profit -- but more importantly, it lets me offer a 50% discount for bulk sales. And if I want to send out copies to reviewers, those copies only cost me $2.75 rather than $8 or more.

Should my circumstances change, however, I would certainly consider switching this title over to Lulu.com. One of my fond dreams is to spend a year or two in England -- which would make it difficult to pop a couple of books in the mailbox every day or so! Having the option of letting Lulu.com handle the printing and mailing, even at a lower profit margin, means that I can keep this title alive no matter where I go.

However, this book also falls into another of those "ideal" POD categories: It's a revival of an out-of-print title. It is already a "successful" book; I'm not relying on DIY publishing to make it a success. At my current rate of sales, it may take nearly 10 years to sell 3000 copies; the publisher who handles my writing books often sells that many in a year. (However, I do make more profit on the few copies that I do sell than I ever earned in royalties on this particular title!) The bottom line is that if I were launching a completely new nonfiction book, I would think very carefully before choosing POD or any other form of DIY publishing as my first option. And if I were seeking to publish a novel, I wouldn't consider it at all. Sure, I might get lucky, like one of the five or ten people who actually have "made it big" in POD. But I also might end up like the other 25,000 or so who haven't.

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Inspiration, Insight and Ideas For Emerging Writers
Volume Three, Issue Three -- April 2006 (View Columnist Bios)
Subscribe/Unsubscribe And Donation Instructions at the bottom of page

Featured Writer On The Rise

Improving Your Writing Habits

Three Ways to Learn by Immersion

By Kelly Huffman

"Lost Love and the Lessons of Canning " by Debby Bull

Reviewed By Cathy Belben

Polish Your Prose: Eliminate the Passive Voice

Inspiration, Insight and Ideas For Emerging Writers Volume Three, Issue Three -- April 2006 (View Columnist Bios) Subscribe/Unsubscribe And Donation Instructions at the bottom of page

Featured Writer On The Rise

Improving Your Writing Habits

Three Ways to Learn by Immersion

By Kelly Huffman

"Lost Love and the Lessons of Canning " by Debby Bull

Reviewed By Cathy Belben

Polish Your Prose: Eliminate the Passive Voice

Inspiration, Insight and Ideas For Emerging Writers
Volume Three, Issue Three -- April 2006 (View Columnist Bios)
Subscribe/Unsubscribe And Donation Instructions at the bottom of page