The Promises and Perils of Publishing Books, Part 2

As I mentioned in Part 1 of "The Promises and Perils of Publishing Books," we will look more closely at some reasons why you might want to self-publish using POD (Print on Demand) technology as an alternative to traditional publishing.

Publishing your book with a traditional publisher promises you a certain amount of prestige. However, will the tradeoffs be worth it (unless of course the publisher offers you a huge advance)? With a traditional publisher, unless your book begins to sell well right away it will not stay on the bookstore shelf very long. Many years ago, I heard that the average shelf life of a book was 17 days, more recently I heard it was a month. In general, most books last less than a year on the shelf. The bookstore that bought your book may soon return it to the publisher for a refund to make room for books that will sell. Usually, you will have only a very small window of opportunity to promote your book by yourself, because many traditionally published books are not promoted at all by the publisher (except for putting your book in their catalog). Naturally, celebrity books and books by famous or well-known authors will get the majority of the promotion dollars. Very quickly, the traditional publishers will turn their attention to the next exciting book they plan to publish. With self-publishing, since you must market and sell your book yourself anyway, you can keep your book saleable for years, and avoid the peril of it going out of print too quickly. So, consider making all the profit yourself by self-publishing using POD (Print on Demand) technology.