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Does anyone know much about self-publishing? Don't worry, I haven't got anything I want to publish myself (ahem, yet), but I was wondering what the rules are and if you could do something sort of viral and underground by, say, getting 100 copies printed up and just leave copies in odd places. The book would have a website address inside and the site would have, say, just a forum and a way to order extra copies. Then you'd just leave it and see what happened.
It would rely on the content being something really special of course, and a lot of patience, and the original outlay for printing, so it really would be a vanity project.
But it could be a lot of fun to find new ways of 'placing' the books: random people to post them to; those country pubs that have a little book shelf that I don't suppose anyone ever looks at; rented cottages that have a little stack of Catherine Cookson books and a copy of Bravo Two Zero; just handing a copy to someone you think would enjoy it.
I bet people are doing this all the time and it's completely failing.
Anyway, with self-publishing do you still have to get an ISBN and a named author and be part of all that bollocks, or could you be completely underground and anonymous, man?
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Louche
Carved TMO on her clit just to make you feel bad
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Are you going to try and start a revolution, Dang?
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The anonymity thing's the big question actually. Not for revolutionary purposes, it's just that it suits the project I have in mind. Having a named author would just completely spoil it. It's hard to explain, without giving the whole thing away. I've said too much already really.
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posted
If the content was something really special, then wouldn't it get picked up by a real publisher? If you wanted to avoid big-style publishing houses to create a kind of underground effect, then there are plenty of small cult-y publishers around who would print the book. You probably wouldn't get an advance but you wouldn't have to pay someone to print it. Everything I've heard about vanity publishing suggests it's something that should be avoided in all situations.
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Dang- it's a cool idea, even if only one person reads the book and enjoys it.
I ALWAYS get up and examine the book shelves in country pubs. Usual contents;
Shropshire Hunting Tales (1924) Common Sea Birds of Great Britain National Trust Guide to England & Wales (1989) A minor Dickens novel in hardback Battered local history guide to a town that's not local Two garish-spined Mills & Boon novels
-------------------- What I object to is the colour of some of these wheelie bins and where they are left, in some areas outside all week in the front garden. Posts: 4941
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not...
You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
Self publishing, you set the book up in word, it's pretty much automated. You can choose a cover from templates - or supply your own. You can print as few as 10 books. Unit price is obviously high - prob about £5-£6 a book.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: If the content was something really special, then wouldn't it get picked up by a real publisher?
I suppose so, but who's got the patience for all that nonsense? I'd just want to get straight on with it, not bothered about sales volume and target markets and, god forbid, signing sessions and shit like that.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: If you wanted to avoid big-style publishing houses to create a kind of underground effect, then there are plenty of small cult-y publishers around who would print the book. You probably wouldn't get an advance but you wouldn't have to pay someone to print it.
I think even a small cult-y publisher would have the same marketing palaver to deal with, and they'd want to do lunch and stuff *throws up*
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: Everything I've heard about vanity publishing suggests it's something that should be avoided in all situations.
Yeah, me too. But every single article in the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook seems to be geared around persuading budding writers to never even pick up a pen and piece of paper because they are doomed to certain failure. Books with titles like How To Make Lots Of Money From Writing actually have a standard introduction which says, "Put the gun barrel in your mouth now. That's it. Now pull the trigger."
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quote:Originally posted by MiscellaneousFiles: Can I put in a bid for the contract to design the cover?
I've got a design for the cover fully formed in my brain. I just don't have an actual book. Minor detail for a daydreamer like m'self of course.
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You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
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Yeah, so it is a slightly expensive business, but damned easy to do by the look of it. And one could just order a couple of copies a month to distribute and see what happened. So patience would be required after all, but it would be under your own control so not so bad as waiting to have manuscripts turned down and that sort of thing.
I see quite a lot of positive stuff on the forums there. Maybe the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook lied to us. Maybe it's written by failed writers and artists with a grudge.
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It's not just the WAAY that's against it though, it's everyone I've ever spoken to in the industry from tutors at University to editors at Faber and Faber; they always say stay away from the vanity press.
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The thing is "vanity publishing" was shit. Because you had traditional litho methods of printing with minimum orders of 1000 books which the author would pay for and then probably sell about two and be left with a garage full of books gathering dust.
Nowadays there is digital print technology which is what all these self publishing places use. There's no set up charge and you can print 1 book or 100 books all for the same unit cost. It's far more economical for someone who only wants a few copies. Plus theres a lot of people who have a large audience that they have created for themselves, like popular bloggers for example.
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I think the warnings I've read have been about a) those places that make you pay for a 500 copy minimum run for £3,000 or something and b) those places that might try to get the copyright or publishing rights off you somehow.
I don't see how a place which charges nothing at all for set up and lets you buy one copy at a time (albeit a bit expensive) is anything to be worried about. No more than getting a printing shop to make you a t-shirt with your own design, or a photo shop to run off a couple of extra sets of prints of your holiday snaps.
It's just a service. Up to you what you do with the product.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: If the content was something really special, then wouldn't it get picked up by a real publisher?
I suppose so, but who's got the patience for all that nonsense? I'd just want to get straight on with it, not bothered about sales volume and target markets and, god forbid, signing sessions and shit like that.
Wouldn't doing the viral / underground thing you talk about also take a fair bit of patience, tho'? What you're talking about sounds fun (be nice to find something interesting on a pub bookshelf...) and takes, probably, a different kind of patience than 'doing lunch', but still sounds like shitloads of work that people who are paid to bother about sales volumes and target markets could do...
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You reached over with your hand and knocked my Jap over
posted
It's all about being a Maverick Publisher.
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quote:Originally posted by Jack Vincennes: Wouldn't doing the viral / underground thing you talk about also take a fair bit of patience, tho'? What you're talking about sounds fun (be nice to find something interesting on a pub bookshelf...) and takes, probably, a different kind of patience than 'doing lunch', but still sounds like shitloads of work that people who are paid to bother about sales volumes and target markets could do...
Yeah, as I wrote later:
quote:Originally posted by dang65: So patience would be required after all, but it would be under your own control so not so bad as waiting to have manuscripts turned down and that sort of thing.
It's a different kind of patience. It would be under one's own control. I don't think the sales volumes would ever justify their own spreadsheet, let alone a Sales Volumes & Target Markets Director (Pacific Rim and Americas).
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You should totally do it. Produce the books as cheaply but nicely as possible (hand-made? screen-printed? whatever): blat out a bunch of press releases for the style magazines, do a bit of emailing, get the project covered in stuff like Marmalade and i-D, become underground art superstar - easy. Make sure to document whether the books disappered, how long they took to go, etc - people love documentation. Invite those who did pick the book up to mail you back some comments or whatever... I dunno. The Pick Me Up newsletter is full of these random projects. (www.putmedown.com). You'd be suprised at how much press / interest / artistic satisfaction these fun, underground projects can generate.
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quote:Originally posted by London: You should totally do it. Produce the books as cheaply but nicely as possible (hand-made? screen-printed? whatever): blat out a bunch of press releases for the style magazines, do a bit of emailing, get the project covered in stuff like Marmalade and i-D, become underground art superstar - easy.
I don't want to come over all Mr Pissondangsparade here, but seriously... what the fuck? This is reads like an email from some 12 year old's dream world. I mean - why the fuck would i-D be interested in yet another self published book from a website full of the fuckers, more so than - say - a book which had undergone even the most minor form of quality control of being accepted by a small publishing imprint. Sure - that site looks like a good way to end up with an actual bound copy of your work, but entertaining the idea the i-D will seize on a self-published manuscript just because someone wrote a press release on it... I mean... Jesus. Sense of reality. This is like my mum thinking you can get an editorial job on The Times just by getting letters published in the Metro.
quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: I don't want to come over all Mr Pissondangsparade here, but seriously... what the fuck? This is reads like an email from some 12 year old's dream world. I mean - why the fuck would i-D be interested in yet another self published book from a website full of the fuckers, more so than - say - a book which had undergone even the most minor form of quality control of being accepted by a small publishing imprint. Sure - that site looks like a good way to end up with an actual bound copy of your work, but entertaining the idea the i-D will seize on a self-published manuscript just because someone wrote a press release on it... I mean... Jesus. Sense of reality. This is like my mum thinking you can get an editorial job on The Times just by getting letters published in the Metro.
You don't know what you're talking about. How do you think stuff *gets* in i-D in the first place? I self-published a fanzine and it got reviewed all over the shop - in Bizarre, in The Face, in Just 17 - and that was just a 'self-published piece of crap' that hadn't undergone any 'quality control' other than that which I was perfectly capable of providing myself. I didn't even send out any press releases - people just picked up on it. Also, I didn't think Dang was talking about just putting out some shitty boring rubbish poorly-written lame story - I thought the whole idea was about leaving it in places and seeing who'd pick it up, etc. Style magazines love that shit. Your attitude is really horrible and negative.
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quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: Are you looking to make any money out of this project, dang?
I'm guessing the complete opposite.
I'd not actually thought about magazine coverage and that sort of thing. Certainly wouldn't be a deliberate aim to get articles written. In fact I would expect the most fun to come from the basic obscurity of the whole idea.
Anyway, there's a long, long way to go before it even reaches the dizzy heights of simple obscurity. The book's not even written yet.
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quote:Originally posted by London: You don't know what you're talking about. How do you think stuff *gets* in i-D in the first place? I self-published a fanzine and it got reviewed all over the shop - in Bizarre, in The Face, in Just 17 - and that was just a 'self-published piece of crap' that hadn't undergone any 'quality control' other than that which I was perfectly capable of providing myself. I didn't even send out any press releases - people just picked up on it. Also, I didn't think Dang was talking about just putting out some shitty boring rubbish poorly-written lame story - I thought the whole idea was about leaving it in places and seeing who'd pick it up, etc. Style magazines love that shit. Your attitude is really horrible and negative.
Oh for God's sake - suggest that some lazy short cut might not work and suddenly it's being horrible and negative. I'm sure none of the hundreds of books already on that site were done by people who were talking about just "putting out some shitty boring rubbish poorly-written lame story", but obviously style magazines aren't falling over themselves to write about them, or the thousands of self published novels that preceeded them. Maybe leaving a copy on a park bench might provide an element of the novelty required to get attention from the style press, in which case fantastic. But for fuck's sake is suggesting that the best route might automatically not be the one that requires the least amount of effort really being "horrible and negative"?
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quote:Originally posted by Thorn Davis: a book which [hasn't] undergone even the most minor form of quality control [by] being accepted by a small publishing imprint.
That's the other thing they always warn against in vanity publishing articles isn't it. I'm never quite clear how you get around this. I mean, publishers don't seem that bothered about quality control these days anyway (qv Dan Brown, Steve Alten et al). Are you supposed to show it to a couple of friends first or something?
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quote:Originally posted by London: How do you think stuff *gets* in i-D in the first place? I self-published a fanzine and it got reviewed all over the shop - in Bizarre, in The Face, in Just 17 - and that was just a 'self-published piece of crap' that hadn't undergone any 'quality control'
Was this before or after you did editorial work for Bizzarre? Because I don't think that's a true and accurate description of how things just get picked up Amp. If I'm wrong and you started writing on the back of a fanzine you started, then much respect.
quote:Originally posted by Black Mask: Are you looking to make any money out of this project, dang?
I'm guessing the complete opposite.
Good... good. Well, depending on the length and content of the book you could try and do a bit of style mag/blog/viral hype of the project and then leave copies lying around in a variety of handmade formats. So each item becomes an event rather than just an artefact. It could take ages. Years, even. Discarded government documents. Misplaced military portfolios. Obsolete instruction manuals. Obsessive compulsive's notebooks. Ancient libretti. Cyber Necronomica... Depending on the material and how you wanted to prepare and present it, you could mail, hand-deliver or insinuate it to some key punters who might stoke up interest and distribute others to whoever...
You could do it as a serial. Or, creepier, reproduce the entire text in all the different formats.
Then you could stalk the recipients, too. Phone them in the middle of the night and giggle down the phone. Break in, rearrange the furniture. Kidnap their families. Kill 'em. You know, really get noticed. Put yourself on the map.
[ 16.05.2006, 12:39: Message edited by: Black Mask ]
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