Although writing is an art, publishing is most definitely a business.

Since you are your own publisher, you are running a business – a small business, but a business nonetheless. Therefore, you must draft a business plan before you go through the process of finding a printer for your book. The business plan will address the financial questions as well as the projected timeline. Since your book has about six months to prove itself before bookstores will pull it, the timeline is important.

Pick a name for your new publishing company. Simply adding the word publishing to the end of your name will work – John Doe Publishing. Don’t make the name specific to your book as you may want to publish different types of books in the future.

Obtain a business license, open a business account at the bank, and get a post office box for your company address.

Hire a professional design artist to make a logo and to do your book cover art. Excellent cover art will help make your book as professional as possible. Use the artwork to print letterhead and business cards.

Get a professional editor to edit your book. There are different types of editors: A copy editor will review your finished copy and look for general mistakes and offer broad stroke improvement. A developmental editor will work with an unfinished manuscript draft and work with you to direct and shape the book.

Set a competitive price for your book before you print. Price books that are similar to yours and also use the basic rule of thumb: five times the cost to print one book. Keep in mind all the discounts that wholesalers and bookstores expect to receive. When setting your price remember that individual bookstores generally get 40 percent off the list price, general wholesalers and distributors get 50 - 55 percent off the list price, and exclusive (master) distributors get 62 to 67 percent off the list price.

Get all the necessary numbers for your book: ISBN, Bookland EAN barcode, copyright, etc.

Write all the “extra” material your book will need: acknowledgements, dedication, preface, copyright, table of contents, and the back cover. Look through some books that are similar to yours to make sure that you have all your bases covered.

Contract with a quality printing company that specializes in printing books. Make sure you understand who is responsible for what. Some printers offer many services for self-published writers while others simply fill your order.

The printer should provide you with proofs to look over. Notate any mistakes that you want corrected. The charges for these corrections will most likely depend on whether it was a mistake on your end or their end.

Once everything is to your satisfaction, have the printer make some galleys for you to begin soliciting reviews and blurbs. These galleys should be sent out about four months before your targeted publication date. Remember that librarians and booksellers make many of their selections from reviews.

Draft “terms and conditions” that outlines exactly how you will handle discounts, returns, billing, shipping, etc. Obviously, this isn’t an issue with the single book-buyer, but it certainly is with bulk book-buyers. If a bookstore wants to buy a large number of your books, the terms and conditions need to be clear on both ends.

As long as you have books to sell, you will be marketing. Your marketing efforts need to be twofold: the book-buying public (or your target audience) and the bookselling industry – independent bookstores, distributors, wholesalers, and online bookstores. This is most certainly where the press release can help you.

Terms you will need to know:

Copyright – Even if you haven’t officially gotten a copyright, your work is still legally protected. Technically, as soon as an author fixes the work in a tangible form, it is automatically protected. However, going through the process of registering your book establishes a public record of the copyright. Also, you can’t sue anyone for copyright infringement until your work is registered. If your book is published through a traditional publishing house, they will copyright your book for you in your name. This may not be the case for self-published authors. In which case, you would need to contact the US copyright office yourself to register your work.

ISBN – The ISBN - International Standard Book Number - is a standard identification system for books and other publications that utilizes a unique identifying number for each book. All book databases, directories, and bookstores use ISBN to track books. Basically, if you want to sell any books in the marketplace, you are going to need an ISBN. The ISBN helps to ensure that the books are identified, ordered, and shipped correctly. In the U.S. you can only purchase ISBNs from R.R. Bowker Company. Whoever purchases the ISBN is the publisher. So if your book printing company provides you with an ISBN, they are officially the book publisher, not you. ISBN are unique not only to each book, but also each edition and version of the book – even if the content is exactly the same; this includes hardcover, paperback, audio, video, and e-book versions. Don’t forget to fill out an Advance Book Information (ABI) form at BowkerLink.com before your book goes to press. Submit the form, and Bowker will include your new book in their directory, "Forthcoming Books in Print." On your official publication date, your book will be automatically included in "Books in Print," a directory that reaches just about every major book buyer, and many reviewers.

Bookland EAN Barcode – The Bookland EAN (European Article Number) is an international barcode used to identify books and other media. Especially, this is a special UPC barcode used solely for books. The number is created using the ISBN, currency, and price of the book. Like the ISBN, each edition and version of the book has a unique number. The reason it is called “Bookland” is because normally the first few digits of a barcode are used to identify the country of origin. Because the book industry has so many products, it has been given its own country code – the land of books, or Bookland. This is simply a special UPC bar code scanning symbol used just for books.

UPC Code – Universal Product Code – this is the normal bar code used on almost everything in a typical store. If you plan on selling your book through a non-bookstore outlet, you will need a UPC.

Library of Congress catalog number – This is a unique number that the Library of Congress assigns to the catalogue record of the book. This number is used in a searchable national database used by librarians. Remember that you need this to get your book into libraries; this is a big market. A card number can be assigned before the book is actually published. The Pre-assigned Card Number Program (PCNP) provides these unpublished books with a Cataloging in Publication record (CIP). When you publish your book, include the CIP data on the copyright page to facilitate book processing for libraries and book dealers.

Galley – Basically this is a pre-publication version of your book. An unbound galley could just be photocopies of the pages that you printed off your computer. A bound galley comes from the printer in regular book form. Usually the bound galley is not the final copy and still needs proofing. Recently, electronic galleys (e-galleys) have come into the picture. E-galleys certainly cost less to print and send out. You can even just post the e-galley on your Web site and send out invitations to view it. No matter which version you decide to send out, make sure the galley includes the following information on the cover or first page: title, author, publication date, ISBN, number of pages, price, trim size, hardcover or paperback, number of illustrations and/or photographs, publisher name and contact information, distributor name and contact information, publicist name, address and contact information, and also print something like this on the cover: “Uncorrected proof - Galley copy only - Do not quote without prior permission from the publisher.”

POD - (print-on-demand) publishing – Some recent advances in printing technology now make it possible to print a regular bound books one at a time. This allows orders to be filled “on-demand” saving on up-front printing and warehousing costs. The major drawback to POD publishing is that the books are not returnable by wholesalers or bookstores. If it doesn’t sell, then they are just stuck with it – a risk most booksellers just aren’t willing to take. Some POD publishers have now started offering a full return policy in order to get the books into the stores and libraries. POD publishers may or may not be vanity publishers.

Vanity/Subsidy Publishing – This is not self-publishing as you, the writer, are not the official publisher. Vanity publishers provide the ISBN numbers to the writer, therefore the company that printed your book is the publisher, not you. Normally, vanity publishers charge writers to publish their books – and this is how they make their money, not by actually selling books. Authors usually see only a fixed number of copies of their books, and often aren't even able to verify inventory numbers. The vanity publisher has control over the look of the book and the set price for the book. Most mainstream booksellers will not deal with vanity publishers. However, if you just want to see your work in print for your own enjoyment, there are some perfectly legitimate vanity publishers that can help you. The good ones will not promise the moon and stars and fail to deliver; instead, they will be forthright about the services they do and do not offer. If you decide to use a vanity publisher, read the contract carefully – or better yet, have a lawyer read it for you. Sometimes undesirable clauses are thrown in that can hurt you down the road.

Self-publishing – Basically, the writer of the book is also the publisher. As the publisher, you contract with other professionals to provide services such as design, editing, printing, and marketing. The final decisions, control, and responsibility all fall to the self-published writer. By definition, the writer would obtain their own block of ISBN’s, not be provided them by the printer. Self-published authors receive all the proceeds of the sale of their books. The writer/publisher has all the control, but also must provide all the money.

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