>>>>> "Mark" == Mark Rauterkus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Mark> Hi All,
>> My first book is entitled Summer Rain and was published last
>> September by iUniverse, the print-on-demand press that was such
>> a great idea that all of their books are backordered for
>> months. (That's another story, though.)
Mark> Hummm.... Let it flow. Would you do it again? So, does
Mark> iUniverse get a big thumbs down from you? Have they worked
Mark> past the delays now? Is that a viable option? Do they want
Mark> exclusives?
The interview I mentioned by Michael is at http://dsl.org/faq/konrath/
(and all of you should check out dsl.org and its new look, as there's
a ton of cool stuff there.) It talks a bit more about iUniverse.com
and my thoughts on it, but I'll add a bit more info, since the
interview happened before the book came out.
Things that are good about iUniverse:
- You get your book at amazon, b&n, borders, and other places for
virtually nothing. If I printed my book myself, it would have taken
months of frustrating phone calls to each of the above to get
listed.
- You don't deal with shipping, credit cards, bum checks, returns, or
a web ordering system, and people get to use a system at a store
that they (hopefully) trust.
- You don't have to pay $5000 to get a bunch of books printed up that
will most likely sit in your garage for the rest of your life.
- The books look good! Glossy cover, perfect binding, good fonts and
interior, etc. These aren't like those books you get printed up at
Kinko's for a presentation or something.
- You get an ISBN, a bar code, and listed in Ingram's database as part
of the deal, something that would cost you a few hundred bucks and
some frustrating paperwork and delays. It also means your book
meets all of the "minimum requirements for a saleable book" that
some book stores might lay on you about having a bar code, having a
glossy cover that doesn't look like it was printed on an inkjet
printer, etc.
- Almost any bookstore in the free world can order the books from the
distributor they already use as long as the distro uses Ingram (and
they all do.)
- A designer does the layout and cover for you, and you can submit
some artwork and have the designer just work with that.
- You get 20% of the book sale price as a royalty.
Things that suck about iUniverse:
- You have to give them the book in Word, using their template. There
is pretty much no flexibility here. This wasn't a problem for my
book, a straightforward linear narrative, but if I was doing some
freaked out, experimental thing, this would be a no-deal.
- They are slow. I followed the instructions to the letter and did
everything exact, and submitted on July 5, for a release in late
September. I don't think I actually saw a copy of the book until
October, though, and I didn't get my bulk order until mid-November.
Book fulfillment can be really slow - some people did not get books
for two months. But some people ordered from amazon and got books
in three days. So it's getting better, but it's still shaky. And
other things, like royalty statements and customer service, are even
worse. They didn't expect such a quick response, and their
infrastructure can't handle it.
- No marketing, no publicity. None. If you have a name for yourself,
if RMS decided to publish a book, or you're the bass player in some
band with a gold record, or you know how to hustle, this isn't a
problem. But they won't take an unknown author and develop them and
get the books into peoples' hands. They just print the books and
get them out the door. Actually, they don't even print them -
Ingram does.
- I wasn't happy with my book cover design, but approved it anyway
because I was so tired of the wait. I could've vetoed it, but I
didn't want to add another two months to the cycle. Other people
think it looks okay, so maybe it's just me.
- When you tell people you have a book published, the first thing they
ask you is "what publisher" and then you always end up giving a 20
minute explanation/apology of the whole ordeal.
I wouldn't give it an enthusiastic thumbs down - I knew my first book
was almost completely unmarketable, and my two choices were to get my
esteem crushed with a thousand rejections, or spend five grand
printing up books that I'd never be able to give away, except to my
close friends. Instead, I got nice looking books to those 37 people
on my list and maybe a few more that found my homepage or went to
amazon, and I get to hold a nice, printed copy of this book that I
thought would only live on my hard drive for the rest of my life. And
as a bonus, it's on amazon, and has a bar code, and anyone out there
can get a copy. And maybe after I get a "real" book published, people
would go back and buy the first one. Or, if I wrote a free book or I
was a known Internet personality and wanted to scrape my web pages
into a print format, this would work great.
As for the next book, I'm going to do the traditional route with a
"real" publisher. I think it's a much stronger work, and I think
others will agree. I would like the publicity and the bigger push
from a known name, something I couldn't do on my own.
-Jon
