Month: March 2012

best self publishing, best self publishing sites

Self Publishing Reviews

In my last post I set out to compare self publishing companies based upon 4 of the top 5 self publishing reviews. I applied a numeric value to each company based upon their relative ranking in each source, and that resulted in the following result totals for the top 5 self publishing companies ranked side by side (out of a possible 34 points):

Outskirts Press 30 Points
Company 3 24 Points
Company 5 19 Points
Company 2 13 Points
Company 14 13 Points

Upon looking at that data, I realized that some sources were weighted more heavily than others, since each source didn’t share the same value system. One had a 13 point value system while another had a 4 point value system. So for the purposes of this next chart, I will apply a 10-point value system to each of the four sources to give each source equal weight and therefore arrive at a more accurate total:

The way one does that is as follows:

TopTen Reviews already has a 10 point system, so the points there remain the same.

Top Consumer Reviews has an 8 point system, which means each point is worth 1.25 points to reach a 10-point system.

Top Self Publishing Firms has a 13 point value system, so to bring that into a 10-point system, each point actually is worth .77 points.

Previously I applied a 4 point value system to the categories in The Fine Print of Self-Publishing, but since one of those values was a negative number for the “publishers to avoid” category, in reality it was a 3 point system with an exception so now each point in that book really becomes worth 3.33.

And that leaves us with this chart below, which, interestingly enough, is not significantly different from the previous chart. Value is value. Good self publishing companies are good self publishing companies.

TopTen Top Consumer Fine Print Top Firms Total
Outskirts Press 8 8.75 6.66 10 33.41
Company 2 3.33 9.24 12.57
Company 3 10 5 -1 8.47 22.47
Company 4 3.33 7.7 11.03
Company 5 7 10 6.93 23.93
Company 6 6.66 6.16 12.82
Company 7 -1 5.39 4.39
Company 8 3.75 -1 4.62 7.37
Company 9 2 3.33 3.85 9.18
Company 10 9 -1 3.08 11.08
Company 11 4 -1 2.31 5.31
Company 12 10 1.54 11.54
Company 13 -1 0.77 -0.23
Company 14 6 7.5 3.33 16.83
Company 15 5 2.5 3.33 10.83
Company 16 3 3.33 6.33
Company 17 1 1
Company 18 10 10
Company 19 6.25 6.25
Company 20 1.25 1.25

Out of a possible perfect score of 40 points, the top 5 self publishing companies according to the combined data from these self publishing reviews are:

Outskirts Press 33.41 Points
Company 5 23.93 Points
Company 3 22.47 Points
Company 14 16.83 Points
Company 6 12.82 Points

As stated in the last posting, I don’t name competitors. Even so, this analysis seems somewhat indicative of the value we offer at Outskirts Press, according to the combined views of four 3rd-party self publishing review sources.

As you compare publishing companies when it comes time to make your publishing decision, keep these 3 tips in mind:

1. Consider the source. How biased is it? How rational? How knowledgeable? Does it seem like a rant, or a legitimate, valuable piece of information that you can apply your own, personal viewpoint to?

2. Consider the date of the information. Is it out of date? Years old? No longer applicable? Since people are becoming accustomed to the immediacy of blogs, Twitter, and Facebook, they forget that information is available “forever” on the Internet. As a result, they assume information they read today was written today, when in reality, you may be viewing information that is years old, was written on April Fool’s day, or in some other way is no longer informative or important. You can typically find a date for all information if you look hard enough.

3. Investigate multiple sources. As you can see from the combined scores of the 4 sources above, no company is absolutely perfect. That’s because they’re run by human beings. Some sources you uncover will love one company and hate another. And a different source will have exactly the opposite opinion. That’s because sources are run by human beings, too, and everyone has an opinion. So find multiple sources of information and apply the statistical analysis method suggested above.

best self publishing

Best Self Publishing Companies

With so much competition in self-publishing nowadays, how are writers supposed to determine the “best self publishing companies” for their books?  It comes down to statistical analysis of multiple sources and reviews. This beats relying upon any one source (whether it be positive or negative) since it’s important to realize that single sources may lack knowledge, integrity, or applicability. Now that the Internet is replacing newspapers, we are bombarded with more information than ever before, but unfortunately, most of the Internet lacks one component that made newspapers and journalism valuable — the vetting process. You can’t believe everything you read on the Internet; you must do your homework, and that involves researching numerous sources and then combining that data into a value system you can actually use.

And that brings us to the process of statistically analyzing at least five sources when making a decision. In the past I have introduced 5 such sources to help you compare the “best self publishing companies” in a logical, mathematical way. Whenever you look at any source for any information, you should consider the date of the information and that source’s vested interest. So by combining the sources together to arrive upon a “sum total” you are better equipped to see an accurate “average score” of the best self publishing companies you are examining.

Let’s compare the best self publishing companies now by performing this analysis on 20 different companies. We will put those 20 publishers in a chart along the left in the order they appear in Top Self Publishing Firms, which lists 13 companies in it’s “Large & Medium” chapter. The remaining seven companies will appear underneath. We will place four self publishing review sources along the top of the chart. Then we will apply a numeric value in the following manner:

Top Self Publishing Firms – There are 13 companies in the “Large and Medium” category in Stacie Vander Pol’s book, ranked from best to worse. So I applied a numeric value for each of them ranging from 13 (good) to 1 (not so good).

TopTen Reviews – Since there are ten companies ranked, I will apply a numeric value for each one. The company they rank #1 will receive 10 points, the company they rank #2 will receive 9 points, and so on.

Top Consumer Reviews – Since they rank 8 companies, I will apply a 8-1 numeric value.

Fine Print of Self Publishing – Rather than charting all 45 companies that are analyzed here, we will stick with the 20 best self publishing companies included in either the “Large and Medium” category of Top Self Publishing Firms, TopTen Reviews, or Top Consumer Reviews. Comparing 20 of anything is enough analysis. Of those, we will apply a numeric value based upon the book’s categories in the following manner: “Outstanding” Companies get 3 points. “Pretty Good” companies get 2 points. “Just OK” companies get 1 point. And since “Publishers to Avoid” sounds worse than not being in the book at all, those companies lose a point.

And that leaves us with this analysis below (blanks indicate no presence in that particular source):

TopTen Top Consumer Fine Print Top Firms Total
Outskirts Press 8 7 2 13 30
Company 2 1 12 13
Company 3 10 4 -1 11 24
Company 4 1 10 11
Company 5 7 3 9 19
Company 6 2 8 10
Company 7 -1 7 6
Company 8 3 -1 6 8
Company 9 2 1 5 8
Company 10 9 -1 4 12
Company 11 4 -1 3 6
Company 12 3 2 5
Company 13 -1 1 0
Company 14 6 6 1 13
Company 15 5 2 1 8
Company 16 3 1 4
Company 17 1 1
Company 18 8 8
Company 19 5 5
Company 20 1 1

As I have mentioned in the past, I don’t mention other self publishing companies by name in my blog. After all, that wouldn’t be very sporting to “Company #20” and certainly not to Company #13– hmm, I guess it’s unlucky after all.

And that’s not even the point of this posting. The point is the concept of combining sources of information to arrive upon a general consensus of data. Now if one were looking to find flaws in the data above, the easiest thing to say would be Top Self Publishing Firms is weighted too heavily because that value system goes to 13 while the others go to 10, 8, and 4, respectively.

Fair enough. So let’s apply a 10-point system to all four sources and see what that tells us next time…

Apple, blogging, ceo, marketing, start-up

Getting video testimonials for your business

While we were in the middle of the Outskirts Press Pre-Production series of blog postings in February, our Outskirts Press blog over at http://blog.outskirtspress.com introduced a video contest in association with Valentine’s Day, titled “Show Me the Love” where we asked our satisfied and successfully published authors to record a 1-3 minute video about either being a published author, their experience with Outskirts Press, or why they loved working with us.

The videos we received were great!  We posted them all on Facebook as we received them. Then our Facebook friends “liked” them or commented on them in accordance with normal social media behavior.  This allowed us to determine 6 “finalists” based upon the number of likes and/or comments each video received.

We then posted those 6 video finalists on our blog along with a poll, asking our blog readers and members of our social community to vote on the video they liked the best.  The winner would receive a free Apple iPad 2.  It was an interesting race, with two finalists battling back and forth in the polls up until the last hour, at which time, one was crowned the winner.

At the bell, Patricia A. Hawkenson, author of Magnetic Repulsion: 100 Poems From Desire to Disgust, was named our Video Valentine for 2012 for this creative video she submitted:

Video testimonials like these are valuable components to running successful online businesses nowadays, because people on the internet are now more likely to “watch” the Internet than they are to “read” it (and yes, I recognize the irony of making that claim in a manner that requires it to be read).

So how do you acquire video testimonials for your book or business? Well, our process worked pretty well, and it went something like this:

1. Use your social media community to solicit participation in a transparent, Web 2.0-friendly way
2. Encourage participation and comments
3. Yes, you may have to offer an incentive to participate.  As popular as Skype may be, it’s still a taxing procedure for most people to create a video, and the likelihood of it being spread across YouTube and the rest of the Internet is not for the faint of heart — particularly for writers, the majority of whom are often introverted. In our case, we dangled an Apple iPad 2, but your gift could be something as easy as a signed copy of your book, for example, or a product or service that you deliver. For instance, our runner-up, received a free iPad edition of her book  (which actually has approximately the same retail price as the iPad 2 itself, so they were both big winners).
4. Once you have video testimonials, use them. Nothing is quite as persuasive as seeing real people making really great comments about your product or service.

So, with that said, take a look at all six of our video finalists by clicking here. Pretty good arguments to use Outskirts Press, wouldn’t you say?

ceo, facebook, self publishing

Fandemonium Volume 2 is published

Let’s take a small break from the Outskirts Press pre-production process (which we’ve been covering for the past month), and the production process (which we’ll cover next) to make a few announcements that I haven’t yet had an opportunity to mention.

For instance… late last month we published our second annual Facebook anthology, Fandemonium Volume 2, which is another collection of writing from our talented community of Facebook friends, all 4700 of them (and counting).  Congrats to all who are represented. You can save 10% on your copy by ordering directly from our bookstore at http://outskirtspress.com/bookstore/9781432788001.html;  although, like approximately 8,500 of our other books, it’s also available on Amazon.com or Barnes & Noble’s website if you’d prefer to buy there. Either way, the American Red Cross gets $7.51 (100% of the royalties of the book) for each sale. They appreciate your support.

Here is the table of contents, to see what work is presented and which authors are represented.  Unlike our Outskirts Press specific anthologies, of which we’ve published three, it’s not necessary to be a published author with Outskirts Press in order to appear in our Facebook Anthology. All you need to do is be a “friend” of our Outskirts Press page on Facebook.  But, I noticed that many authors who were new to Outskirts Press and represented in our first Facebook anthology are NOW Outskirts Press authors, and that’s always gratifying to see. So thank you.

self publishing, self publishing a book

The Self-Publishing Pre-Production Process at Outskirts Press

Publishing our 2nd annual Facebook anthology, Fandemonium Volume 2, provides a great opportunity to walk step-by-step through the entire publishing process with Outskirts Press from start to finish.  That way, new authors who are considering their publishing options can see first-hand what the online experience is like.  And since I’m not only the CEO, but also a writer, I can also use this opportunity to share some “best practices” and suggestions that will help writers who read this series of posts better navigate our book publishing website to get the most “bang for their buck.”  I happen to have some “insider-hints” that can serve the savvy author well.

I will cover two phases of the publishing process in two separate series:

  • Pre-production – the part of the process leading up to clicking the “I APPROVE PRODUCTION TO START” button.
  • Production – the part of the process after Production Approval and leading up to publication.

So… onward to the pre-production process:

self publishing, self publishing a book

Self-Publishing with Outskirts Press – Selecting a Package

For the purposes of this self-publishing walk-thru we will use the 2nd annual Facebook anthology, titled Fandemonium Volume 2, comprised of submissions from our Facebook friends.  Since we’ve already published the first volume, I am greeted by the following screen when I sign-in to my Publishing Center at http://outskirtspress.com/authors.php:

This dashboard allows me to manage my current publication, Fandemonium Volume 1. I can order books or marketing options, among other management tools.  I can also start publishing a new book by clicking the “Click here” link circled along the left-hand side under my “Active Titles” list.

If I am publishing my FIRST book with Outskirts Press, I would click the Publishing Packages button along the top menu tabs (circled above).

In either case, I am taken to the Publishing Packages screen to choose the publishing service I wish to order:

 If I don’t know what book publishing package to order, I would order the “Down Payment on Book Publishing” option, which applies a small deposit toward the package I will eventually choose. It also gets my production team assigned so I can consult with my Publishing Consultant personally.  Some authors assume they must pay this deposit in order to get help or speak with someone on the phone, but that’s not true. We open lines of email communication with every author who registers for a free Publishing Center from our site at http://outskirtspress.com/authors.php when they download our free e-books.  And our toll free number is listed on just about every page of our website.   But when it comes to priority and allocation of available resources (people), it’s probably easy to understand why someone who has paid a down payment on their publishing package gets more attention than someone who has not.

So here are some hints to skip the Down Payment and go straight to a publishing package, where all the Outskirts Press service really kicks in: If you have any color inside your book, you need the Pearl package; it’s as easy as that. All of our covers are full-color, so this consideration is solely related to the interior of the book.

If your interior is black/white, you have more choices, although over 60% of all our authors choose the Diamond package and about 25% select the Ruby. Here’s why:  The Emerald doesn’t include an ISBN nor distribution (less than 2% of our authors choose this one), and the Sapphire is pretty limited in terms of available formats and options (less than 5% choose this one).

But perhaps the best reason is because authors publishing under “higher” packages earn higher royalties and their book copy prices are less expensive. Let’s look at a chart (which also compares 3 of our competitors):

Not to get too complicated, but in this chart, you’ll notice that competitive publisher “U” pays less royalties than the Diamond or Ruby package but more than the Sapphire package for this example book.  But keep in mind Publisher U’s retail price in this example is also $4 higher.

So for this reason, among others that I’ll elaborate on later, I’m going to choose the Diamond package for our Facebook anthology. And we’ll continue with that next time…