Category: best self publishing

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A self-publishing author’s experience with Outskirts Press

Last week I shared an email I received from one of our authors in relation to the custom covers we designed for her.  I’d like to share another email I received, this more a more general reaction to the entire self publishing experience as a whole. All of us at Outskirts Press work hard to make sure all our authors have wonderful experiences (and we get it right 99% of the time), so it’s always gratifying to receive emails like this from one of our recently-published authors (I recevied this roughly around Easter).

“Dear Anna, Brent, and Jodee:

I really wasn’t expecting my free copies of A Guide to the Psalms of David when it arrived earlier today,  since there was no entry under shipping and I assumed “processed” under orders simply meant my entry on the website was accepted and my book was now in the queue to be printed. Unprepared, I can only relate that when I opened up the package and saw my book, I was stunned;  elated, on the one hand, because of the gorgeous cover–in which credit goes, as you know, to my wife Audrey–terrified, on the other hand, with the realization I now have to rev up to a significantly higher standard if I expect to go out into the world and inspire people with, in the words of John Adams, poetry “superior to all odes, hymns, and songs, in any language.”

But regardless of what the future brings, I cannot thank each and every one of you enough for helping me bring this creation–because it is more than just a book–into the world. And I dare say, the cover alone, is healing: the colors and the representation of David contemplating his harp. (You might recall from the Bible when King Saul had attacks of melancholy, David’s harp playing soothed him.)

All the best, and whatever holiday you are celebrating at this time of year, may it be with much Joy!!!

Sincerely,

Steve Rosner

P.S. Please thank the elf who corrected the interior cover by removing a superfluous ‘the’ in the title. Although it was discovered at the last minute and corrected on the cover itself, I opted the leave the interior as is, not wanting to delay the book any longer.”

 

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Proper book pricing for self publishing books

Reviewing your current pricing is the next step in the galley review process. Remember back in the pre-production process when you set your book’s pricing based upon an estimated page count?  Well, now you get to do it based upon the actual page count of your fully formatted book.    There could be a difference, depending upon how close your estimate is to the final page count.  Formatting often makes a book much longer than some authors anticipate (smaller trim sizes combined with chapter drops can add a significant number of pages).

But the Outskirts Press benefits still continue. Even now you can still modify your retail price by clicking the “plus” or “minus” button to either make your retail price (and therefore your royalty) higher or lower. You’ll see the effects of your changes instantly.  Click the Update button to make any changes take effect. If you have both a paperback and a hardback, you’ll do this twice.

Once you’re happy with your price(s), click the Save and Continue button to proceed to your interior.  Keep in mind that if you make any changes to your interior at the proofing stage which increases or reduces your page count, your pricing may need to be reviewed and set again…

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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…

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The new “About Us” page

Yesterday I posted the 2011 version of the About Us page that appeared on our self-publishing website. It contained the “About Us” story through 2010. As 2011 came to an end, we needed a new version for 2012, which continued the story of our company and our successfully published authors through 2011.  Consolidating 10 years of achievements and milestones into one page was becoming laborious (to read), so with this version, we shorted it considerably. Here’s the new version:

Ten years ago, Outskirts Press was founded by author Brent Sampson in 2002 as a result of his personal frustrations with getting published. Outskirts Press incorporated in Colorado in 2003, and through strategic partnerships with companies like Writer’s Digest, Outskirts Press quickly became the fastest-growing full-service book publishing and book marketing firm.

The years between 2004 and 2006 marked a growth rate in excess of 1,500%, an amazing accomplishment that was publicized in July 2007 by The Denver Business Journal when Outskirts Press was recognized as the 3rd fastest-growing privately held company in Colorado.  By the end of 2006, Outskirts Press already had nearly 1,000 books in print,  all of them available worldwide through Ingram, Baker & Taylor, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble online, among others. And by the end of 2007, Outskirts Press had more than doubled its title totals again.

self publishing books

In 2008 The Denver Business Journal recognized Outskirts Press for the second year in a row as the fastest-growing publisher, and in fact, the fastest-growing privately held small-to-medium sized company in Colorado (in any industry), boasting growth of over 500% for the years between 2005-2007.

2009 and 2010 marked more new milestones, as well. In 2009 Outskirts Press published its 5,000th title and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing privately held companies.

And in 2010, and again in 2011, Outskirts Press repeated its appearance on the Inc. 5000 twice more, and became the only self-publishing company to appear on the list of top 5,000 fastest growing businesses in America for three years in a row.

So how does Outskirts Press remain the fastest-growing full-service publishing provider?

  • It begins with our Mission Statement: To exceed the expectations of every author we help publish.
  • It continues with our commitment to conservationism and recycling. Our most popular book sizes offer a recycled paper-stock option, featuring 30% post-consumer.
  • It grows with our authors.  Just ask Gang Chen, who earned over $100,000 in 180 days; or Sally Shields, the stay-at-home mom-turned-2-time Amazon.com bestseller; or Ronnie Lee, who has become one of the most prolific published authors of our generation with the assistance of Outskirts Press.

As we look toward the future, our commitment to produce high-quality books and offer high levels of support to our authors in all three phases of their journey (writing, publishing, marketing), only grows stronger.

For instance, we have embraced digital e-books with three a la carte digital publishing options:

 We have embraced social media to help our authors further promote their books:

And, we practice what we preach, publishing our own series of books to help authors navigate the sometimes tricky waters of book publishing and offering free publication in various anthologies through the year to showcase how easy, fast, and fun it can be to publish with Outskirts Press.

Through it all, Outskirts Press authors have remained our main focal point. With over 8,200 published titles, Outskirts Press continues to pour development dollars and resources into further improvements to the Outskirts Press website and its growing list of writing, publishing, and marketing services/products to further support our authors’ goals and dreams.

What does success mean to you? By any measure, you will find it here with Outskirts Press and we look forward to helping you on that journey.

Many of us, and some of our family members, took a moment during our July 4th picnic, to pose…

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Two social media polls – Results #2

Over the last couple of weeks our Outskirts Press blog featured two different Web 2.0 polls seeking the opinions of our social media community.  The first poll asked our community of authors, readers, and industry professionals what new option we should introduce and the final results voted for a Social Media Market Research option, which was subsequently launched a number of days later on our site.

The second poll asked our community what publishing promotion we should offer in October from among three choices: An instant 10% savings on our publishing services, $300 of “Mad Money” to spend on any pre-production option the author desires, or free Amazon Search Inside and Barnes & Noble See Inside submissions after publication.

Like the previous option poll, this survey was also a close race between 2 of the 3 options, with the Mad Money promotion squeaking out a very narrow victory.  Make it so, the $300 Mad Money promotion will be the one we offer come October 1.

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Self Publishing Authors Speak Out

For the past several weeks I have been discussing marketing tactics an author can take to secure more marketing muscle and “exposure” for his/her book on the various channels made available by his/her publisher. I’ve been using our company Outskirts Press, and specifically our free self-publishing app, as the primary example, although many of these tactics hold true for all writers, regardless of where they published.

Specifically, our app has four categories: blog, authors, videos, Twitter.  For the past two weeks I covered the six different ways our authors can get featured on the blog category of our app. Today we’ll talk about how to get featured on the “authors” category of the app, which is updated on our app three times a week and provides an excellent spotlight for the authors who appear there.  The app shares the author’s biography,  comments about publishing with Outskirts Press, the front cover image of the book, and buttons to buy the book directly either from Amazon or the author’s Outskirts Press webpage. When a new author is featured, he/she also gets a plug on our Facebook page.

When you combine limited availability of promotional channels with the publication of around 150 books each month, one needs to establish “requirements” that each book or author needs to meet in order to be considered for promotion in the various channels.  For instance, a few postings ago I introduced a new free opportunity we’re offering for our authors called the “Awesome Cover of the Week” spotlight.  The requirement in that case, obviously, is that the book has to have an “awesome” cover.  Of course, I realize that “awesome” is a relatively subjective phrase, but in our line of work, it is relatively easy to identify covers that do and do not fall into even the subjective areas of that definition.

So, how do we identify authors to feature in the “authors” section of our blog?  It’s relatively easy, also — we feature authors who have chosen to share their positive publishing experiences with us.  I started Outskirts Press to help authors (since I am one), so I love hearing from our published authors about their joys of publication.  Authors share their comments with us all the time in a variety of ways.  And with this new app feature, we can “thank” those authors for those kind words by giving them additional exposure for their books.    Authors who share their positive experiences with us are also archived on the Self Publishing Author blog at http://selfpublishingauthor.wordpress.com

Next time we’ll talk about improving your chances of getting featured in the “video” section of our iPhone app — and this is actually a guaranteed method. So stay tuned.

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Best self publishing company 2011

When we recently held a poll on our Outskirts Press blog asking our authors their opinion of a new marketing option we were thinking about introducing, the results and responses were overwhelmingly positive. In fact, the majority of feedback we receive from our authors is always positive, and that always makes all the people who work so hard on our authors’ books feel really good.  I don’t do as good of a job as I should sharing all the wonderful comments we receive from our authors on a daily basis, so in the interest of sharing, I’ve included some below.  As the CEO, it’s no surprise I think Outskirts Press is the best self publishing company, but it’s gratifying when so many of our authors tend to agree with us. Thank you, all.

“I’ve come to Outskirts Press with battle scars from [publisher], [publisher], and [publisher]. This experience with you has been almost too good to be true. I kept waiting for the problems to start and to date, everything has exceeded my wildest hopes.  I particularly like the ongoing support and daily emails about marketing because it’s been the hardest thing to figure out on my own.  How I wish, my other two books were with you. I’m deeply grateful for the patience and kindness extended to me throughout this process and I love the way the book turned out.  I’m getting many compliments on the cover.  I know three other people who will explore your site. Their decisions remain to be seen and I may never find out if they go with you or not.  But, count on the fact that I will definitely keep recommending you to anyone needing a publisher.” – Jonna-Lynn

“I will start by saying this; I am so glad I decided to go with Outskirts Press. I have done some pretty extensive research on different publishing companies and found that Outskirts Press was the best fit for me. In short, other companies seemed to be missing some key components to making my book successful. I sent my manuscript to Outskirts and it seemed to be a breeze from then on. The available options before, during, and after publication are outstanding and everyone seemed to be flexible as far as any changes that needed to be made. Let me leave you with this one final note; the success of your book largely depends on you, the author. Outskirts Press makes it ten times easier to navigate those roads.” – J. Evan Johnson

“From the minute of contact, my team at Outskirts Press helped me fulfill a dream. When I didn’t know how to send the files the right way, Rebecca was there for me. She spent hours putting it all together for me. Anytime I had questions she was there with the answers. Everyone was respectful and encouraging through the entire process, and each step was exciting. The day my author copies arrived, and I held my book in my hand, there were tears, but no words to express that feeling of completion. The book is beautiful, and the web page design is something to be proud of. I will use Outskirts Press for my next book. I could not have done this without everyone’s help. Now the Marketing COACH has been informative with tips and information. The sales sheet was a special treat and has been invaluable for advertising my book. This has been a Blessed journey from beginning to end, and I know we aren’t done yet. Thank you to everyone at Outskirts Press.” – Carolyn McBreen Gibbs

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Get featured on our publishing app by winning book awards

All last week and this week we’ve been discussing marketing methods to get featured in the “Blog” category of the Outskirts Press app. We have established that the best way is to focus on being featured in one of these blog categories from our Outskirts Press blog:

Author Spotlights
Book Spotlights
Monthly Bestsellers
Virtual Book Tours
Award Winners
Book Fair Participants

So far we have already discussed Author and Book Spotlights, bestsellers, and Virtual Book Tours.   Now we’re going to talk about winning a book award.

Winning a book award is kind of like getting on a “bestseller” list. There are so many “book awards” and so many “bestseller lists” that the sheer number of them have watered down their prestige and value.  It may be true that appearing on the New York Times bestseller list is just a wee bit more impressive than appearing on the Outskirts Press bestseller list.  No doubt.  And it may be true that winning “Gold” in the Reader’s Choice awards is less impressive than winning the Nobel Prize in literature.  No argument.

But do you know what is even less impressive than winning a “Gold” in the Reader’s Choice awards?

Not winning one.

Nothing against the Reader’s Choice awards, or the Writer’s Circle Awards, or the Ben Franklin Awards, or the Indie Awards, or the Best Book Awards, or the CIPA Awards, or the IPPY Awards, or the….. I could go on and on.  All these awards have merit and value because there are WAY more people who do not win any book awards than people who do.    And once you accomplish something that only the minority accomplish, it’s worth bragging about.  Isn’t that one of the cool things about publishing a book?

We think so, and that’s why we feature many of our award-winning authors both on our blog and in our iPhone app.  We love bragging about our authors’ successes.   We realize we’re never going to publish a Nobel Prize winner. And that’s okay.  But we do publish statistically more award-winning books than any other self-publishing firm, and as a self-publishing firm, that’s worth bragging about, too.

So, that’s another way to get featured in our iPhone app: Win a book award.    We make it easy for our authors to enter six vetted awards all at once with our Book Award Submissions package, but, as I mentioned above, there are literally hundreds of awards to pursue independently.

Speaking of which, we have our own book award (why wouldn’t we?) and authors who publish with Outskirts Press can be automatically eligible for the $1,500 grand prize, just like our 2010 Best Book of the Year award-winner Doris Kenney Marcotte.  For details about the Outskirts Press Best Book of the Year award, click here.

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Best self publisher for reviews and awards

In the previous post I looked at the number or 4 or 5 star reviews received on Amazon for books published by the top 6 major online self publishing firms.  That chart is below again as a refresher.  This time the chart is in order from highest to lowest, which, admittedly, is how the previous chart should have been, too (rather than the order it was in, which was the order in which I conducted the research).

Publishing Firm Percentage of 4 or 5 star ratings
Outskirts Press 52%
Company U 37%
Company C 27%
Company A 24%
Company X 19%
Company L 13%

My conclusion was that Outskirts Press books and authors receive statistically more and statistically higher reviews on Amazon than our 5 competitors.  In fact, it’s not even close. 52% compared to the next highest, Publisher U at 37%.  Remember, I don’t mention our competitors by name, but it’s probably not too hard to decipher this table…

Reader reviews are all well and good — in fact, we’re proud to come out on top in this analysis —  but I was curious if there was a correlation between high book reviews on Amazon and results within a widely recognized and valued book award contest. So I browsed the results of the ForeWord Reviews BOOK OF THE YEAR AWARDS that were just listed in the July/August issue of ForeWord Reviews trade magazine to compare these same 6 companies:

Publishing Firm Book of the Year Awards
Outskirts Press 4
Company U 4
Company C 1
Company A 0
Company X 0
Company L 0

What do you know? There is almost a direct correlation between the percentage of 4-5 star reviews on Amazon and the number of book awards won by a major book contest.

Not surprisingly, those publishers whose books received less than 25% 4-5 star reviews didn’t win any awards at all.  And this in spite of the volume/quantity advantage they have.  For instance, Publishers A and X publish approximately 2-4 times as many books as we do in a month, and Publisher L claims to publish about ten times as many.  Well, quantity doesn’t translate to quality, as you can see here.

I guess this also proves that Publisher L’s CEO was accurate when, in a 2009 New York Times article, he claimed that his company has “easily published the largest collection of bad poetry in the history of mankind.”

I don’t get the press that he gets (probably thankfully, because I’ve been known to put my foot in my mouth on occasion, too), so for the convenience of NY Times journalists everywhere, they are welcome to my analysis above, and this handy-dandy quote: Outskirts Press easily publishes better books, on average, than our five major competitors.

Actually, we seem to publish better books, on average, than any of our competitors. I searched the 2010 ForeWord Book of the Year Awards for all 20 of the publishers I’ve been posting about in the past and I couldn’t find any that can compete with Outskirts Press.

Just sayin’…