Technical Tutorials for Authors - Best Resources for POD Publishers - CreateSpace, Lightning Source, Lulu and Others

This page is aimed at people who self-publish (or want to), especially those who do most of the work themselves. Therefore, some of the information focuses on Createspace (CS) and Lightning Source (LSI), who are no-frills providers. LSI just prints what you send them—they don't comment on your cover or manuscript. CS started out the same way. In September 2009 they launched a range of editing, design and marketing services, but these are optional, so you can still go the low-cost, do-it-yourself way.

POD Book Design and Production

To publish on CS and LSI, you need to upload print-ready files in formats such as TIF or PDF. You can create PDF files in MS Word, but for your book to look its best, you really need a professional lay-out tool.

Quark Express used to be the industry standard. Fortunately, these days are gone. Nowadays, there's Indesign. With carefully set-up paragraph and character styles, it's a joy to lay out books in Indesign. I have put together a page for book publishing with Indesign.

If you want your own publisher name on your books, you need to supply your own ISBN numbers. This page explains how to produce good-looking ISBN barcodes.

Print Quality: CreateSpace vs. Lightning Source

Many people feel that LSI print quality beats CS. That has not been my experience. Granted, my experience is limited. Or perhaps CS has been getting better.

LSI enforces a limit on the amount of ink that can be used on a cover. That limit is 240% out of a possible 400%. (There are four inks. 400% means 100% of each ink on top of one another.) For one full-color cover I printed, on the first proof, LSI's 240% ink limit produced a washed out cover with dull contrast. Next to my beautiful CS cover, the LSI cover reminded me of the cheap paperback version of international bestsellers one can find in India. For the next proof, I did a lot of work in Photoshop to bring back contrast into the picture. The cover was much improved. Still, if I have to pick between the two, there is no comparison. The CS cover is just gorgeous. I wanted to order 200 new copies to spread my business around, as I had already ordered 350 with CS. Sadly, I had to go with CS again.

What about the interior? I prefer the cream paper LSI uses to the CS cream paper. It is a little lighter and offers more contrast with the type. Also, I find LSI type a little crisper and more black.

However, if you print black-and-white pictures inside your books, the comparison breaks down. On some proofs, I have found LSI print quality of greyscale pictures a good head above that of CreateSpace. But from one copy to the next, and even from page to page, I have found a huge variance in LSI's grey levels for grayscale photos and graphic elements. The variance is so large that some well-contrasted photos sometimes come out crisp, sometimes washed out. This makes it a no-go for me to order illustrated books from LSI in any volume, which I regret.

Best Self-Publishing Websites

Foner Books has a practical, no-nonsense site about POD publishing that's not shy about telling you what works and what doesn't work.

Aaron Shepard's Self-Publishing Page has good articles for tech-savvy self-publishers. I found many of the links below in Aaron's excellent book, Aiming at Amazon (highly recommended if you're aiming at Amazon).

Tools for Self-Published Books Sold on Amazon

Sales Rank
TitleZ lets you track your sales ranks over time. It even lets you plot your title's progress agains other books. Free service while it's still in beta.

To check your book's current sales ranks across Amazon international sites, you can use Aaron's SalesRankExpress.

Improving your Amazon Listing
To upload your Amazon author bio, use Author Central.

The publisher form lets you fill in the "Editorial Reviews" section of your Amazon listing with reviews, excerpts, a table of contents and more. On the first page of your book's listing, Amazon only displays two boxes from the publisher form, so Aaron Shepard recommends fitting as much as possible into the "Publishers' Comments" box, and ignoring most of the other boxes on the form.

If you want to submit a cover image, enroll in Amazon Advantage... But do not register your books unless you want to give away your profits. Once enrolled, click on "Image Upload" in the "Items" tab and follow the instructions.

To add more book images, go to the book's main Amazon page. Below the cover thumbnail, click the "share your own customer images" link. If someone else uploads images that mess up your listing's front page, delete your own images and upload them again to jump to the front of the queue. If that does not work, you may have to rate your own images (thumbs up) and the ones you want to display last (thumbs down) before order is restored.

To sign up for the "Look Inside" feature, go to the Search Inside Program site.

Opting out of the "Search Inside" program is a bit more complex than signing up. I made a page just to explain how to remove a book from "look inside".

Best POD Discussion Groups

For CS and LSI customers, this Yahoo group for print-on-demand publishers is a gold mine. Here are a few among the many posts I've found useful:
Setting wholesale discounts
Barnes & Noble's special order policy
Which printer for a 100-to-250-book run?

The CreateSpace forum is also very active, so it's a good place to research POD topics. But if you have technical questions, you run a good risk of getting misinformed.

Tools for LSI Customers

Many LS tutorials are hidden on the Lightning Source website. To search for Lightning Source tutorials, click the link.

There, you will find such treasures as:
Lightning Source: Indesign CS3 Settings for interior files.
Lightning Source: Indesign CS3 Settings for cover files.
Lightning Source: Photoshop CS3 and CS4 Settings for cover files.

Ipage is an Ingram website that lets you check your book's inventory. In fact, type in the ISBN of any book, and it will show you how many Ingram has on hand! You will need to register on the web site, then a rep will send you a second registration sheet that you'll need to fax back.

Selling Self-Published Books Outside the US

There's no Amazon in Australia and New Zealand, but people who want your book there can get it from the book depository (via Lightning Source) without paying an arm and a leg.

Reviews for Self-Published Books

The Midwest Book Review has a submission system for small publishers. The site links other information about reviews.

If you've got $550 to spare, you can get a professional review from Kirkus Discoveries.

And if you've only got $305, you can buy a review from Foreword's Clarion Preview.

Awards for Self-Published Books

For $75, you can apply for the Independent Publisher Book Award. The same company runs other awards, such as the Living Now Award. This sounds like an Awards farm, so are these awards worth winning? I haven't read any reviews of this service, so I don't know.

Best Books about Self-Publishing

For promotion, a lot of people seem to like Plug Your Book by Steve Weber (here's his book promotion blog). I haven't seen it, but I clicked the "Look Inside" button on Amazon and looked at the index. There is so much in the index that I saw this book is not for me. If I had to think about all the things in this book, I would get stressed out. And avoiding stress is the whole reason I got into self-publishing—as opposed to going through an established publisher, as I did with my first book. But that's me, and this well-reviewed guide might be just what you need.

I started this section, then John Culleton of the famous pod_publishers Yahoo group came out with an annotated booklist of his favorite publishing books. He has read far many more books than I on the topic, so I will leave the topic here for the time being.

Press Releases

The top outlet to send a press release is PR Newswire. The bad news is that you have to become a member ($195 per year) and that a single press release in the US costs $680. That's for 400 words (409 with the nine-word grace). That's costly, but in addition to potentially generating press, it will help people find your website as Google pays attention to PR Newswire ("if you can afford it, it's probably not spam").

PR Web is a budget contender ($360 for the top package).

Then there are all the free press release services. Here are two blogs (1 and 2) that try to pick the best.

Sales of Self-Published Books

The following articles and links provide an interesting reality check.

These POD sales stats by iUniverse suggest that only one POD book in 200 sells over 500 copies. In fact, according to another source, the average AuthorHouse book sells 41 copies.

Andrea Hurst, an agent, talks about shifting from self-publishing to having a book deal.

Dan Poynter, the self-publishing guru, has compiled a list of book statistics.

Literary Agents

So your self-published book is doing well and you're thinking "hey, this could go somewhere, I'd better get myself an agent so I can find a publisher". Or your self-published book is going nowhere and you're thinking "hey, this is not what I thought would happen, I'd better find myself an agent so this book can get out".

Whatever your reasons for seeking representation, the best way to get an agent is probably to find a published author who likes your book enough to recommend it to her agent. Barring an introduction, here are resources I like.

Google searches. As you're probably aware, Google sucks. It will return a hundred irrelevant results until you find what you're looking for, in this case, bona-fide agents with a track record. To save you time, here is a tricky google query I love. It will retrieve pages where publishers list their "sub-agents" or "co-agents", i.e., the agents who represent their books in foreign countries. I love this approach because it looks outside the box in order to find where the box is in the first place. You want a US agent? Why, just look at a UK publisher's sub-agents in the States, Sherlock.
Tricky Google Query to Find Book Agents

Query tracker gives you the names of agents who represent certain authors. If you know authors in your genre, find their agents and query them.

The AlleyCat blog has features on literary agents. Look them up and see if they are a good fit for your book.

EveryoneWhosAnyone is not just a who's who of the book world, it's the fun and gripping log of a man's search for an agent. Many, many, too many agents listed there—as well as links to other resources. Highly recommended.

Book Promotion: Guerilla Marketing

I have a bit of a "blasé" take on book marketing. But nothing replaces experience, you've got to try things for yourself. :)

My view is that ultimately, the only things that will sell a book by an unknown author are 1) either a book that you can't put down and takes off virally, or 2) a dynamic author who sells 95% of the copies in person at presentations.

This has been my experience. A book of mine was published by a top Australian publisher. The PR could not have been better. The book launched at the top book event of the year. The visibility in bookshops was outstanding. I dedicated months to guerilla marketing, giving talks in all the universities, doing radio all over the country, getting into all kinds of magazines, doing multiple book launches—one in Parliament! I printed postcards, bookmarks, posters, made a pretty good website, submitted a lot of online articles. The book was a complete flop. With distance, I can see all of the flaws in my writing of the time—not that my writing is perfect now! I had poured all I had into the book, but it just wasn't good enough.

My view is that if a book has a chance, an agent will take it.

The main reason I now self-publish is that I want to save myself the stress of having to deal with the publishing world. No pressure, no deadlines, no guilt. If I ever make something that is good enough, it will start selling by itself. At that stage, I will get an agent.

Just sharing my experience. You have to make your own. :)

Wishing you the best of luck with your publishing projects,
Smiles,

Andy

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