January 31, 2012  

Publish Your Book For Free Now!

…and spread your blog

…http://www.jamesaltucher.com/2012/01/self-publishing-your-own-book-is-the-new-business-card/

 
 
 
 

If you’ve just given someone your business card then you failed. If you have a business card you might be about to fail. Nobody cares what’s on it. I throw out all business cards.

I’ve written before about self-publishing but more than the “why” and “how” (although I add more info about this below than I previously have) this post is why YOU NEED to self-publish if you are in business, a blogger, a writer, or in any profession (essentially all professions) where you want to stand out versus the competition. There is one window, right now, where you have the right combination of “easy to do”, “cheap”, and “nobody is doing it”. The key is the Era of Validation is over. Nobody needs to pick you. You pick yourself.

I’ve published eight books in the past seven years, five with traditional publishers (Wiley, Penguin, HarperCollins), one comic book, and the last two I’ve self-published. In this post I give the specific details of all of my sales numbers and advances with the traditional publishers. Although the jury is still out on my self-published books, “How to be the Luckiest Man Alive” and “I Was Blind But Now I See” I can tell you these two have already sold more than my five books with traditional publishers, combined.

If you, the entrepreneur, self-publish a book you will stand out, you will make more money, you will kick your competitors right in the XX, and you will look amazingly cool at cocktail parties. I know this because I am seldom cool but at cocktail parties, with my very own comic book, I can basically have sex with anyone in the room. But don’t believe me- it costs you nothing and almost no time to try it yourself.

The rest of this article is really three discussions: Why self-publish rather than use a traditional publisher, why entrepreneurs and others who seek to stand out for career or creatuve purposes should self-publish, and finally, HOW does one go about self-publishing.

WHY:

A) Advances are going to zero. Book publishers are getting more and more squeezed by declining booksellers so they, in turn, have to squeeze the writers. Because of so much free content on the Internet, the value per unit of content is going to zero unless you are already an established name-brand author.

B) Lag time. When you self-publish, you can have your book up and running on Amazon, paperback and kindle, within days. When you publish with a traditional publisher its a grueling process: book proposal, agents, lawyers, meetings, edits, packaging, catalogs, etc that ensures that your book doesn’t actually get published until a year later. Literally, as I write this a friend of mine just IMed me the details of his book deal he just got with a mainstream publisher. Publication date: 2014.

C) Marketing. Publishers claim they do a lot of marketing for you. That’s laughable. I’ll give you a very specific story. When I published with Penguin they then met with a friend of mine whose book they wanted to publish. They didn’t realize she was my friend. She asked them, “what marketing did you do for James Altucher’s book”. They said, “well, we got him a review in The Financial Times and we got a segment about his book on CNBC and an excerpt in thestreet.com”

Here’s what’s so funny. I had a weekly column in The Financial Times. I WROTE my own review. As a joke. For CNBC, I had a weekly segment on CNBC. So naturally I spoke about my book during my regular segment. And for thestreet.com excerpt, I had just sold my last company to thestreet.com. So instead of doing my usual article for them I did an excerpt. In other words, the publisher did NOTHING, but took credit for EVERYTHING. Ultimately, authors (unless you are Stephen King, etc) have to do their own marketing for books. The first question publishers ask, even, before they look at your proposal is, “How big is your platform?” They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts.

D) Better royalties. i.e. when I self-publish I make about a 70% royalty instead of a 15% royalty with a traditional publisher. I also own 100% of the foreign rights instead of 50%. I hired someone to sell the foreign rights and they get 20% (and no upfront fee).

E) More control over content and design. Look at this cover for “SuperCash” designed by a traditional publisher for me (this was my third book). It’s hideous.

Now look at the cover for my last book (self-published), “I Was Blind But Now I See”. You may or may not like it but it’s exactly what I wanted. Publishers even include in the contract that they have final say over the cover and this is one detail they will not negotiate.

You also don’t have any teenage interns sending you editorial comments back that you completely disagree with. YOU control your own content.

Now,

WHY SHOULD ENTREPRENEURS SELF-PUBLISH

A) You have content. I have enough material in my blog right now (including my “Drafts” folder which has 75 unpublished posts in it) to publish five more books over the next year. And I’m sure that number will increase over the next year as I write more posts. You’re an entrepreneur because you feel you have a product or an idea or a vision that stands out among your competitors (if you don’t stand out, pack it in and come up with a new idea).

You know how to do something better than anyone else in the world. How do let the world know that you are better? A business card won’t cut it. People will throw it away. And everyone’s got a website with an “About” button.

Give away part (or all) of your ideas in a book. You’re a brand new social media agency? How should social media work? Write it down. You’re a new CRM software package? How should CRM be better? Tell me. How should online dating services work? Tell some stories. Heck, make them as sexy as possible.

Don’t have time to write it. Then tell it to a ghostwriter you outsource to for almost no money. You don’t need 60,000 words. Do it in 20,000 words. Throw some pictures in. Just do it. Then when you meet someone and they ask for your business card, how cool will it be when you can say, “here, take my book instead.”

B) You have more to say. More and more companies have blogs. Many of the posts on the blog are “evergreen”. i.e. they last forever and are not time specific. If you just take the posts (mentioned in the point above) and publish them people will say, “he’s just publishing a collection of posts”. A couple of comments on that.

1. So what? It’s ok if you are curating what you feel your best posts are. And for a small price people can get that curation and read it in a different format.There’s value there.

2. Don’t just take a collection of your posts. A blog post is typically 500-2000 words. Usually closer to 500. Do a bit more research for each post. Do intros and outros for each post. Make the chapters 3000-4000 words. Make a bigger arc to the book by using original material to explain WHY this book, with these chapters, presented in this manner is a different read than the blog. Have a chapter specifically explaining how the book is different from the blog.

With my last book, “I Was Blind But Now I See” I had original material in each chapter and several chapters that were completely original. Instead of it being a collection of posts, the overall book was about how we have been brainwashed in society, and how uncovering the brainwashing and using the techniques I describe can bring happiness. This was covered in a much more detailed fashion than the blog ever could even though the material was inspired by several of my posts.

C) Amazon is an extra platform for you to market your blog. Or vice versa. You won’t make a million dollars on your book (well, maybe you will – never say never) but just being able to say, “I’m a published author” extends your credibility as a writer/speaker/enterpreneur when you go out there now to sell your book, syndicate your blog elsewhere or to get speaking engagements, etc. And when you do a speaking engagement, you can now hand something out – your book! So Amazon and publishing become a powerful marketing platform for your overall writing/speaking/consulting career.

D) Nobody cares. Some people want the credibility of saying “Penguin published me”. I can tell you from experience – nobody ever asked me who was my publisher when Penguin was my publisher. And, by the way, Penguin was the worst publisher I ever had.

E) How will I get in bookstores? I don’t know. How will you? Traditional publishers can’t get you there either. Often bookstores will look at what’s hot on Amazon and then order the books wholesale from the publishers. In many cases, tradtional publishers will take their most-known writers (so if you are in that category, congrats!) and pay to have them featured at a bookstore. As for my experience, my traditional publishers would get a few copies of my books in the bookstores of major cities (i.e. NYC and that’s it) but nothing more.

OK, I’M CONVINCED. HOW DO I SELF-PUBLISH

There’s lots of ways to do it but I’ll tell you my experience.

A) First write the book. For my last two self-published books, as mentioned above, I took some blog posts, rewrote parts of them, added original material, added new chapters, and provided an overall arc as to what the BOOK was about as opposed to it just being a random collection of posts. But, that said, you probably already have the basic material already.

B) Createspace.com. I used createspace because they are owned by Amazon and have excellent customer service. They let you pick the size of your book and then have Microsoft Word templates that you download to format your book within. For my first book I did this by myself, for my second book, for a small fee, I hired Alexanderbecker.net to format the book, create the book design, and create the final PDF that I uploaded. He also checked grammar, made proactive suggestions on font (sans serif instead of serif) and was extremely helpful.

C) Upload the PDF. Createspace approves it, picks an ISBN number, sends you a proof, and then you approve the proof.

D) Within days its available on Amazon. It’s print-on-demand as a paperback. And by the way, your total costs at this point: $0. Or whatever you used to design your cover.

E) Kindle. All of the above (from Createspace) was free. If I didn’t hire Alex to make the cover I could’ve used over 1mm of Createspace’s possible covers (I did that for my first book) and the entire publishing in paperback would be free. But with Kindle, Createspace charges $70 and they take care of everything until it’s uploaded to the Kindle store. Now you are available in paperback and kindle.

F) Marketing.

1. Readers of my blog who asked for it got the first 20 copies or so for free from me. Many of them then posted good reviews on Amazon to get the ball rolling.

2. I’ve been handing out the books at speaking engagements. Altogether, I’ll do around 10 speaking engagements handing my latest book out.

3. I write a blog post about how the bo0k is different from the blog and why I chose to go this route.

4. Writing guests posts for blogs like Techcrunch helps and I’m very grateful.

5. Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, Google+ are also very helpful.

G) Promotions. You’re in charge of your own promotions (as opposed to a book publisher.). For instance, in a recent blog post I discussed the differences between my latest book and my blog and I also offered a promotion on how to get my next self-published book (“Bad Behavior”, expected in Q1 2012) for free.

Entrepreneurs are always looking for ways to stand out, promote their service, and get validation for their offerings. Writing a book makes you an expert in the field. At the very least, when you hand someone a book you wrote, it’s more impressive than handing a business card. It shows that you have enough expertise to write the book. It also shows you value the relationship with the potential customer enough that you are willing to give him something of value. Something you created.

And you can’t say the excuse “I don’t have time, I’m running a business.” Entrepreneurs make time. And they have the ideas so, again, at the very least you can use elance.com to hire a ghostwriter.

Over the next year I have five different books planned. All on different topics. I’m super-excited about them because I’m allowed to push the barrier in every area I’m interested in and there’s nobody to stop me. There’s nobody I need validation from. I get to pick myself.

You can do this also. And now, you should do it. There’s no more excuses in this environment. Good luck and feel free to write me with any questions.

–

Follow me on Twitter

Also, see 33 Unusual Ways to Become a Great Writer

 
 
DISQUS...

Glad you liked it. Would you like to share?

Facebook

Twitter

Sharing this page …

Thanks! Close

 
Sort by popular now Sort by best rating Sort by newest first Sort by oldest first

Showing 58 comments

    • Alan Mendelevich, I run AdDuplex – ad exchange network for Windows Phone, develop amCharts for WPF, Silverlight and WP7 and do other stuff… 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Makes total sense, but, because of the self-published books, searching for books by subject on Amazon became as useful as searching for it on Google. Books are like large web pages/blog posts now.
       
       
    • David_Merkel, David Merkel: At my blog there are two main purposes: teaching investors about better investing through risk control, and tying all of the markets into a coherent whole. 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Thanks, James, I’ll give it serious thought, as I have been approached to write a book on Value Investing.
       
       
    • Felix 4 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      I´m already writing on a book, maybe two books (thanks to your inspiring blog posts and books. i really like them.). The first one is about why everyone should travel to Ameland (a dutch island) once a year, because I have done that for almost my entire life now. Believe me, it´s another world, probably a better one. But I am not sure about the second one, since it´s more like a mixture of little stories about a friend of mine. We´ll see how that turns out in the end.
       
       
    • Daniel Silva 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      I’ve always wanted to go to Ameland, amazing that you would mention it (it’s not exactly the most popular place). My wife is Dutch, and her brother has been many times, but she (and I) have not been. Is there a mailing list or something I can sign up for to know when your book is done, Felix?
       
       
    • Felix 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      I suppose it will take like two or three month from now (maybe four?), since I have just started working on it. Wow, I didn´t even think of a mailing list, good idea! Just send your Email adress to felix1203 at gmx dot de and I promise to contact you when it´s done.
       
       
    • Leslie L. Kossoff, Co-Founder and Publisher, Leadership Quantified e-Publishers. And when I’m not doing that, I’m a writer, speaker and confidential advisor to executives and entrepreneurs worldwide. 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Very, very true, James. In the heyday of management consulting, the only way a boutique operator could stand out was by having a book. Now, with technology being what it is, this has become an available avenue and necessity for anyone who wants to stand out in any arena.That being said, keep in mind, your books are good. They’re well written and well thought out. That makes a difference – sort of – because lots of folks buy books they never read. They just buy them and have them. (I always hope that’s because they intend to read them – not just that they want impressive looking bookcases…or, these days, to be able to tout the number of ebooks they’ve got on their Kindle the way they do Twitter followers or Facebook ‘friends.’)So, to your blog audience, my only addition to all the good information and guidance that you have provided (and now I’m speaking as a publisher – yes, I’m going to do the pitch: www.leadershipquantified.com ), make sure you’ve got a good editor. It’s all well and good to have a ‘book’ out there – but if it’s crap, you’ve just shot yourself in the foot.

      Or you can hope that yours is one of the books folks buy but never read.

       
       
    • Daniel Silva 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Great blog post James, I agree. I am going to do this. I’m going to start chronicling my experience with a start up I’m engaged in. Very early stages, but we’re going about it in a way you might suggest, building the product first, trying to get some revenue, starting small and agile, not raising funds (not yet, maybe not ever). The book will either be a very interesting look at a brand that could explode, or a book about lessons learned and things I will do differently if this fails with future projects.I’m going to share this with a friend of mine, too, who I know wants to write a book too but is scared to do it, I think. This may help them get over the hump. Good stuff, James, as always. Thanks for writing it.
       
       
    • Garett 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Post of the century! Thanks James. People tell me that I should write books. Like many things in the world, the entire process has changed immensely. Many years ago I recall looking into it. The process was expensive, involved a lot of negotiation, a lot of interference and unwanted editing from publishers, and if it got approved, would take a long time to get to print. Just like you stated above. After all that they wanted me to pay for the printing of the runs of the books in case the stores failed to sell them.As I was an unknown with barely enough funds to live on as it was. I dropped the project and stopped looking into it further. All I saw was a big black hole to drop money time effort, blood sweat and tears into. Your blog and especially this post now has me thinking about writing again for many reasons.Many thanks!

       
       
    • Leonardo 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Hi,
      I’m working on a translation, from Italian to English, to be self-published; after having convinced the Italian writer that that was the way to go. Your help, via your posts on the subject was invaluable. Thank you very much,
      L. Pavese
       
       
    • Terreece M. Clarke 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Fantastic post!I remember when I started out as a freelancer/journalist we were always told by the book publishers and within media circles that no self-respecting writer self-published. It was for losers who couldn’t get their work published by a REAL publishing house.There was always this image of a poor bastard sitting in his mother’s basement raging against the (publishing) machine surrounded by cases of books he’d spent thousands on printing.

      Don’t get me wrong, there are some who still hold on to that sentiment, but the majority of industry people are waking up and seeing the writing on the wall. E-books and e-readers have changed the game much life social media has changed the way businesses interact with their customers and the way the media interacts with users.

       
       
    • the444 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      “There was always this image of a poor bastard sitting in his mother’s
      basement raging against the (publishing) machine surrounded by cases of
      books he’d spent thousands on printing.”You crystallized exactly how they did, in fact, try to brainwash us. And they might have convinced some of us, for a time. But now they have failed! That day is over, isn’t it?! And it’s about time!(I say this with all the bluster of someone who isn’t doing anything to publish anything except my own uninteresting little blog, but I like jumping on this bandwagon. Down with the patronizing, greedy, too-big-for-their-own-britches publishing houses. I never did like them OR their attitude!)

       
       
    • VW Vagabonds, Around the World in a VW 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Seven years ago we went the traditional self-publishing route. That is, we started our own publishing company and ordered a print-run of books from a commercial printer. One day the tractor-trailer pulled up at our apartment and began unloading pallets. Gulp!The markup was a little better than createspace but we had all those books staring us in the face every day.After a lot of hard work and creative marketing we sold them all. At that point we stumbled onto createspace. I would never do it the old way again. Now, everything is absolutely automated. This past year we were traveling and never gave one thought to the logistics of fulfillment, inventory, warehousing, etc… It all happens behind the scenes and Amazon simply makes a deposit to our bank account each month.

      In many ways I think of createspace as the most concrete realization of the potential of the internet.

      Those looking for automated income should seriously consider starting a book / dvd project today.

       
       
    • James Altucher 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      4:30am wakeup. Read until 6:30, write until 8 or 8:30, yoga, shower, eat, then work, then read again, then maybe write a little. then if i have time, respond to some emails, then sleep.I skip TV, dinners, meeting people, calling people, and thinking bad thoughts about people (thats the hardest part)
       
       
    • James Altucher 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      4:30am wakeup. Read until 6:30, write until 8 or 8:30, yoga, shower, eat, then work, then read again, then maybe write a little. then if i have time, respond to some emails, then sleep.I skip TV, dinners, meeting people, calling people, and thinking bad thoughts about people (thats the hardest part)
       
       
    • Lishen Nair 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Thank you for this James. This answers so many questions I had. Just one more: When you make your work available on Kindle, can you still make your work freely downloadable, or do Amazon now own rights to your book?
       
       
    • B Young 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      that post really hit me James. I successfully create and sell very focussed artworks and blog about them as works in progress on kiwimotorart.blogspot.com suddenly I can see a book about how I do this filled with pictures and info for others. my isolation down here in the antipodes, New Zealand, is now no barrier! on to it!!!!
       
       
    • Jlcollinsnh 3 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Hi James….Nicely done, clear and specific. As my blog has come together I’ve been thinking more and more about this, remembering your earlier post on the subject.Never thought about it as being the “new business car” but you are absolutely correct. I’ve been tossing biz cards for years and I’m sure folks have been tossing mine.

      Many, many years ago before the age of computers I had a business professor who declined to carry cards. this at a time when cards actually had a function and mattered. His thinking was they were so ubiquitous that by not having one he’d be more memorable.

       
       
    • Mitchell Davis 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Hey James,
      I was the founder of BookSurge, which Amazon bought in 2005. They integrated our POD software and manufacturing system globally and turned our self-publishing business into CreateSpace. Great technology, great people and super psyched to see this article. I have been reading you on SAI for some time and really, really like your style. You can imagine how the industry treated us like we were pariahs in 2000 … and it is so great to see this become the new normal. Congrats!
      Mitchell Davis
      http://www.bibliolabs.com
       
       
    • psprint coupons 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      This is really good idea that the book can be represents as the business card. But one must not ignore the business card. It is also the way to spread the contact. With the business card you can spread your business easily compare to the book.
       
       
    • the444 4 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      My great-uncle published several books in and around 1982. Was he ahead of his time? They are in the library of congress and in a number of university libraries now (as well as on my bookshelf right next to my head – and ironically, I had to pay $80 for one of them from some swindler on Amazon and I can’t bring myself to pay $180 for the other one that I want. I have not yet exhausted all family sources to see if anyone has any copies, though.)
       
       
    • James Altucher 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      I know a guy in the investing world who self-published a book around 1990 and then bought all the copies. Now if you want to buy one of his books you have to pay of $1000 for something that is totally out of date. Its funny how that works. But that will be a thing of the past ina world that is print on demand. Then price will never go up.
       
       
    • Andreas Moser 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      Very motivating post!A few questions:
      1. How is the print/paper/binding quality of the Createspace books in comparison to the ones published by the legacy publishers?
      2. How did you choose the list price of the paperback and kindle editions?
      3. With all the books you buy yourself to hand them out for free, do the copies sold to other readers at least still cover the costs? (Without taking the writing and editing time into consideration of course, because we know then it will always be a loss.)Thank you!

       
       
    • VW Vagabonds, Around the World in a VW 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      1. The quality of a creatspace book is indistinguishable from any high quality paperback.2. We carried-over the price from when we first printed the book independently. The price of similar books has gone down (thanks in part to createspace) so I would probably lower the price if I were publishing today. Look at what others are charging for similar books and try to find the price point that will maximize profit.3. We pay $4.54 per copy for those we order as handouts or for in-person sales on a 407 page book size 5.5″ X 8.5″.

      They’ve made is so that the only thing to lose is the time invested

       
       
    • James Ford 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      inspirational, yes. but if you plan on writing a book, and you actually expect someone to read it, you better work with an editor.writing is an extension of who you are, and you don’t want that extension being responsible for a setback in your career or whatever your point is for writing it. put in the time and make it high quality.this is unless, of course, you don’t want anyone to read it, and you just want to make the statement that you wrote a book (wrong reason to write).

       
       
    • GiovanniIsaksen 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Great post, thanks for filling in some of the details. I’m inspired to
      self-publish my book, The Value Investor’s Guide to Apartment Buildings…. as soon as I can get the world’s slowest writer (me) to finish it. Thanks also for the Woody Allen post, the daily writing is helping.
       
       
    • Dan Limbach 2 comments collapsed Collapse Expand
      I agree that the publishing house model is nearly dead, unless you are a celebrity, former high level government official, or high profile criminal trial personality (defendant, victim, lawyer).Before we all believe we can all be successful self-publishers, we need to understand a couple fundamentals.1) If you have a big platform (audience), your chances of success with your book are much better. This includes when you are just distributing your book at cost to move your business forward. You need to get a lot of books out there to get the phone to ring and generate new business. For non-famous folks, it helps to have a large blog following or a popular website, or a large email database. Without something like this, your chances are greatly hindered. You may still become a viral success, but this is very rare.

      2) It’s very hard to overcome bad writing. It’s a reflection on you, so it also won’t help your business one bit if it is amateurish, or has mistakes. If you have the ideas but you find it hard to put them in writing, find a partner. They help you put your ideas into a book, and you cut them in on the first $500 or so of the profits before you take a dime. You may never see a dime, but your partner/friend will get something for their troubles, and you’ll have a better quality book to hand out and generate business.

      3) Give yourself a deadline. If you don’t, something will always get in the way from finishing the book and sending it to the service who will print it. If you set a deadline, you also have to stop thinking of new chapters you may want to add, new research to include, or other features. There’s always an opportunity to write a sequel.

      4) Your book simply may not be worth reading. People think their life stories or business philosophies are compelling, when they are really not very unique or interesting in terms of a commercial opportunity. Unless you can put a unique spin on it, people may just not be interested. Write the first two chapters, and solicit the opinions of a few people who have no compelling interest whether you succeed or not. They will tell you the truth more than a friend or relative. Contact some top reviewers on Amazon, and ask them if they would read your first couple chapters. This is a litmus test. Not 100% bonafide, but a good initial indicator about the chances for your book.

       
       
    • James Altucher 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Dan, I agree with those four points. The interesting thing, they all also apply to the traditional publishing model. In most cases, agents and editors don’t know whether your book will be worth reading. You have the same ability as they do to figure that out. And without them looking over your shoulders, you might even write a better book. But yes, self-publishers need to keep those 4 things in mind. Thank you.
       
       
    • ofolk 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
      Like always, great post James! Thank you!The world is changing rapidly,there should be no doubt about it, not only the book publishing industry is being and will be disrupted, the same will happen with the music distribution industry as well and there is/are/was people working on this:
      “upcoming Megabox music store and DIY artist distribution service that would have completely disrupted the music industry. “http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/…

       
       
  • Chris Han 1 comment collapsed Collapse Expand
    Great stuff… i’m definitely going to self publish my book in the near future. Thanks for posting this!

Tags:

Trackbacks / Pingbacks

  1. jas pria - February 24, 2012
  2. Get Sponsored - February 18, 2012
  3. stop spam plugin - February 8, 2012

Spread Libertopia! Share Link...& Your News!

Please log in using one of these methods to post your comment:

Gravatar
WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. ( Log Out / Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. ( Log Out / Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. ( Log Out / Change )

Cancel

Connecting to %s