how to make a book

in the process of making and selling books for back patio press, i have learned some things about printing and selling small press/independent books. i feel like a lot of people don't know some of these things. i will keep this very short and concise. there are a lot of other blog posts about making books. i recommend this interview with spencer madsen for example.

digital printing

most/all indie/small press books use digital printing. digitally-printed books are printed one at a time and are glued together by a machine. you can print any number of books at a time, for cheap. the printer we use for back patio does a 5"x8" ~130 page book for less than $3 per copy and you can order just a single copy if you want. colored ink inside the book or nicer paper will make the book more expensive.

'real' paperback books put out by eg. penguin books use offset printing. offset printing has a minimum run count of somewhere in the thousands, but the paper can be very high quality and thin, the ink is nicer, and the margins look better, because they use real stitching instead of glue. digitally printed indie books will always look and feel shittier, and the margins will look worse, so add more to your gutter margins to compensate. you cannot have a 'real'-feeling paperback book if you use digital printing.

i have had a hard time finding digital printers in the UK who operate as cheaply as printers in the US. all UK-based printers, from my research, have a $120 startup fee, or something, regardless of the number of books printed. however, snowfall press (based in pennsylvania) lets you create an account and print a ~400 page book shipped to your house for ~$9.50. i did this recently, independent of back patio stuff, and felt empowered/impressed.

amazon print on demand and ingram spark print on demand use digital printing. amazon books have a print date and location on the last page. i enjoy looking at amazon kdp books and seeing when they were printed.

i do not recommend investing in an offset print run for your indie book unless you're confident you can sell over 1,000 books. i have seen a few small presses complaining on twitter about having to donate/give away 970 books because the did an offset print run without realizing they'd only sell ~15 books. i recommend assuming you will sell between 0 and 15 books for any book you make. for this reason, digital printing is better.

typesetting/cover art

this means making your word document into a pdf that looks nice. it's actually pretty easy, in my experience, aside from dealing with page numbers, if you use microsoft word. many people use indesign for book layout, but i don't think it's necessary, however, indesign supports ligatures better, which is the term fro when certain letters merge together in an aesthetically pleasing way. you pick a font, add the sections and page numbers, and add a gutter margin to make the inside margin of each page wider. you can change the page size in microsoft word. back patio makes books that are 5"x8". the printer we use has a nice responsive preview tool so you can verify the book will look good before printing.

for whatever reason, a lot of small presses forget to include page numbers, even if they have a table of contents that lists which page a story is on. i think it's funny. but don't do this.

making the cover is more complicated because it requires knowing how big the book will be, so you can make the spine the right width. our printer has a calculator to make this easier. you need to add 'bleed' to your image, which means adding ~.25" to each side that will get cut off. you will also want the front, spine, and back to be one single large image - imagine ripping out all the pages of a book and laying the remainder flat. so if you are making a 200 page 5x8" book, make a cover that is something like 11"x8.5" (5.25[front cover]+5.25[back cover]+.5[spine] x 8.5).

ISBNs

in order for your book to be sold through a distributor (see below) or book store, your book needs an ISBN, which is a unique number and includes metadata in the ISBN database about the publisher and category of your book, for example. ISBNs must be paid for and the pricing is insane/terrible/anti-small business. you can buy one for $100. you can buy 10 for $300. you can buy 100 for ~$600, etc. It gets cheaper the more you buy in bulk. Major presses have unlimited, cheap ISBNs, basically, while most small presses require a startup/annual fee of $300-600 just for the ISBNs. amazon print on demand gives you one for free and ingram spark gives you one for cheaper. you can buy secondhand ISBNs but 1) you will get ripped off and 2) they will not actually list you as the publisher, since that is listed when the number is purchased. Bowker, which sells ISBNs, is a non-governmental monopoly and i hate them, and you should too.

[update]: amazon kdp likes to automatically insist that the listing title for the book match the cover text, and also the title registered with the Bowker ISBN, which also has automated filtering for various things like punctuation. this morning, in trying to set up Neil Clark's Time. Wow. on amazon for international shipping, we learned that Bowker truncated the final period (.) from the title, which means that the ISBN is registered as Time. Wow while amazon is expecting the title to be Time. Wow. (based on the cover). this means we cannot currently register the book on amazon and, i guess, i need to try to contact someone at bowker over the phone?

distribution / bookstores

to get your book on amazon or any real book store or library, for the most part, you need to work with a distributor. this is a warehouse/website combo which will hold onto copies of your book and put your book in a database or catalog for stores to order from. small press distro is a company that does this for most small presses and there is a minimum annual fee of something like ~$300 to use them at all. they take a cut of the sale price when a book store buys a copy to sell to a customer. the distributor also handles returns (most bookstores will return unsold books after some period of time for a full refund). just having your book listed with a distributor does not mean that bookstores will carry it, because there are probably over a billion books to choose from. major presses pay money for their books to get preference in the catalogs. you will not get your book picked up by any bookstores through small press distro unless you land some really big reviews/press.

some cool small stores will let you work directly with them, as the publisher. you will need a returns contract, but you can send them a package of books that they will stock for you (or you can drop them off in person). this requires a personal relationship with a bookstore. some bookstores allow authors to do this, but many (in my experience) will just ignore you. amazon, in this way, is like a normal bookstore - you can sign up to sen them copies of your book to keep in a warehouse, if you are not using their print on demand service.

amazon, ingram, and small press distro all take something like ~34-50% of the sale price, or something. there are calculators for each online. for example, if you sell a 200 page book for $16 on amazon through amazon kdp, you will get ~$6.50. thus if you are an author with a 50/50 split with a press that uses amazon kdp, you will get ~$3.75 per book. this is more or less standard across all distributors, as the publisher, the distributor, and the store all want to make money off the final sale price. most major presses offer something very small, like 2-5% royalties, while print-on-demand presses will be more generous with 30-50% royalty splits. however, some small presses will not give you royalties, or will only pay you in contributor copies, for example. if money is important to you, you should consider this before signing a contract.

libraries

libraries, from a publisher standpoint, are basically the same as bookstores. you need an ISBN, distribution, etc. to get books into a library. they also use catalogs which major presses spend money to get priority placement in. libraries spend a lot of money on crazy ebook contracts with major presses. you will most likely never see your book in a library.

shipping

if you forgo normal distro channels and ship books yourself, you can use Media Mail via the USPS (usa only). Media Mail is a subsidized rate based on weight and is cheap. It can only be used to books/cds/records/stuff like that. you can mail a book across the country for like $3. You might get busted for including pins or tshirts in these packages. The USPS also tends to lose these packages most frequently. Back Patio has had something like 8 books shipped via media mail lost in transit, which feels high.

shipping internationally is really expensive. it costs something like $15 to ship a single book across the atlantic. there is no media mail for international shipping. 15 copies of 50 Barn Blurbs shipped directly from the printer (usa) to the UK cost us something like $70 to ship.

you can have the customer pay for shipping. this is normal and offsets shipping costs. some small publishers will offer free shipping as a sales tactic. this tactic works on me. i recommend using a print on demand service like ingram or amazon kdp for international orders.

reviews/galleys

this is another big area where small presses struggle. the key to being taken 'seriously', getting reviews, drumming up press, and getting your book stocked in book stores depends on this step.

most major presses, in anticipation of a book release, will send out hundreds or thousands of free 'advance' copies of the book, sometimes up to a year in advance of the book release. they send these books to review websites, magazines/newspapers, critics, and, maybe most importantly, librarians and librarian organizations. they also give them away at conferences, like AWP.

note that these are separate from 'free' copies for normal people through eg Goodreads giveaways. most small presses will have tighter timelines and lack the funds to spend ~$6 x 500 = $3,500 on giving away free books for reviews to promote a book 6-12 months before release. most small presses instead rely on people organically purchasing and reviewing a book, which makes the 'hype' cycle short and stuttery. most small presses struggle with successfully getting reviews from advance reader copies, as most venues that publish reviews use a submission system just like they do for unsolicited fiction or poetry, which is a lot of work to ask from a potential reviewer. i recommend forging a good personal relationship with reviewers/venues to help get reviews out there.

some reviewer organizations, like kirkus, ask for multiple copies of the book, for some reason, as well. most reviewers will ignore you, even if they say that they promise that will review the book in personal correspondence. you should expect to get 0-2 reviews for every 25 books you send out, maybe.

most 'legit' reviewers ignore digitally printed books sort of on principle. small presses are basically no different from self-published books and no one takes small press/self-published books seriously in the 'real world' outside your indie scene.

digital reviewer systems are similarly expensive. for example, sending out ebook copies to reviewers through NetGalley costs something like $600 per book for 6 months, or something. these ebooks are given to people who sign up for books based on some rough metadata like topic/style of book and in my experience reading through netgalley reviews, indie/experimental literary fiction is very unpopular. you will get 1-star reviews by people who think all books should espouse positive christian morals, for example, or who think your story has no plot.

goodreads giveaways cost ~$200 dollars for a normal, non-promoted giveaway, and ~$600 for a promoted giveaway. plus the cost of the book and shipping, obviously.

awards

awards help promote a book or author via exposure. most award organizations will talk about the book/author in a press release, on the media, online, etc. An award also helps you convince potential readers that the book is good or worthwhile, and should help sales, i assume.

to be considered for almost any award, a publisher/author must send between 3-10 copies of the book to an award committee by some date. these copies are not returned. i have seen some awards that ask for only 1 or 2 copies. many awards have an entry fee of $75-$150 as well, although some are free to enter. i do not know whether, for most small presses, paying money/sending books to these arbitrary awards with names like American Book Award or National Literature Association Award, or whatever, is actually worth it, in terms of exposure or sales. i do not think indie books win awards. 

however, recently-ish, the publisher that put out Ducks, Newburyport was ripped off by some awards organization that required them printing something like 10k copies of the book as part of the process to promote the book because of the award, or something, but the award organization never paid, for some reason, and the publisher needed to run a GoFundMe for $50k, which is insane and embarassing. here is an article about it.

other fees / tax

selling anything on, eg. bigcartel or bandcamp, means you will pay a fee on each item sold, something like 3% plus $.30 per item. same for square (if you sell things with a square reader at a book fair or reading) and even paypal. so if you sell a book for $10 on bigcartel, you will only 'get' $9.60.

bigcartel also reports your sales as taxable income. many independent authors get fucked on taxes if they make more than like $1,000 per year because this income isn't taxed when you get it (unlike, for example, a paycheck from a restaurant, which takes out the tax before it pays you). independent income like this is taxed at something like 30%, which is very high and shitty. if you make $1,000 in selling books this year, you should keep $300 of that in your bank account for when you file your taxes. i think you also need to file your taxes 4x per year if your sole income, or the majority of your income, comes from this kind of payment, for some reason. if this applies to you, and you are somehow making all/most of your money through book/art royalties, you should save receipts for eg. office supplies, computers, art supplies, or even mileage (for travel for research) to use for tax deductions. you can look this up on your own time, if it applies to you.

you can risk not reporting this income and being fine or getting fucked by the IRS. you have higher odds of getting fucked by the IRS if your publisher is a real 'company' like an LLC, as opposed to a couple of idiots selling books out of cavin's apartment. getting fucked by the IRS means you have to pay what you owe and they'll send you threatening mail about garnishing your wages.

if you are a publisher, you should tell your authors about this tax stuff (especially before you file forms on their behalf). 

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by now you should have a better appreciation for how expensive/impossible it is to 'compete' as a small publisher. if you start a book press, you will never 'compete' with a major press. you should have very low expectations, lower than you may already have. every step of the way is more expensive or impenetrable for you and you will not be taken 'seriously' by eg. reviewers if you do not do all of the expensive/impossible things. even if you do all the expensive things, you will still lose money, most likely, and not be taken seriously.

most 'success' stories about new/small presses published on publisher's weekly, for example, are actually about imprints created under one of the major 5 presses. these imprints basically have a million dollars to throw at creating/promoting a book and do all of the expensive things i listed above. they aren't actually indie presses.

ingram and amazon make some of the above steps easier for you, as a publisher, especially for international sales. which is why they are popular with small presses, but they have their own problems, for example, the layout/formatting interfaces are, from what i hear, difficult or confusing and limited in what you can do, eg. edge-to-edge printing on the inside, for example, for all-black pages.

if you are an author putting out a book on a small press, you should be aware of all of the above, as well. you will most likely be disappointed in your publisher for not getting you many/any reviews or interviews on your behalf. you will most likely be disappointed in how hard it is to get your book taken seriously by institutions like book stores or libraries, or even other small press authors or small websites/blogs that you like. you will not make money on your small press book. you most likely will make something like $300 on your small press book over 1-2 years, and $150 of that will be from your friends/family.