By Natalie Burg
These days, everyone's an entrepreneur. That includes creative professionals, such as artists, musicians and authors, who used to be considered nearly the vocational opposite of businesspeople. Not anymore. Thanks to the advent of self-publishing, crowdfunding and e-commerce, indie artists of all kinds are launching their creative careers as solopreneurs.
Self-publishing in general is turning the traditional publishing industry on its head, but print-on-demand services, or POD, are making every writer's dream of becoming a published author achievable, and it's not just because of the obvious reasons: that the out-of-pocket cost of printing one book at a time is relatively less expensive than gambling on a 1,000-book run.
"Not long ago, an aspiring book writer rejected by traditional publishing houses had only one alternative: vanity publishing. For $5,000 or $10,000, or sometimes much more, he could have his manuscript edited and published, provided that he agreed to buy many copies himself, often a few thousand or more. They typically ended up in the garage," wrote Alan Finder for New York Times. "Digital publishing and print on demand have significantly reduced the cost of producing a book."
The advantages of POD for authors is translating to a much larger impact on the publishing industry as a whole. In fact, some believe it's even saving it.
More Books Are Better
When asked if he thinks the ebook will kill off the print book, Clive Thompson wrote for Wired that he's reminded of the 1980s-era idea that computers and email were going to eliminate all paper from offices. Instead, word processing and printing capabilities resulted in more paper use in offices.
"When you make something easier to do, people do more of it," wrote Thompson. "'Print-on-demand' publishing is about to do the same thing to books. It’ll keep them alive—by allowing them to be much weirder."
By 'weirder' Thompson means more individualized and diverse. And he was correct. Bowker has reported increases in the numbers of book titles published overall for years, despite decreases in titles published by traditional publishers. The bibliographic information clearinghouse reported the growth has been "driven almost exclusively by a strong self-publishing market."
"What was once relegated to the outskirts of our industry—and even took on demeaning names like ‘vanity press’ is now not only a viable alternative but what is driving the title growth of our industry today,” said Kelly Gallagher, vice president of Bowker Market Research, in a 2012 press release. “From that standpoint, self-publishing is a true legitimate power to be reckoned with. Coupled with the explosive growth of e-books and digital content – these two forces are moving the industry in dramatic ways."
Author Control
If there's anything that best vouches for POD, it's the fact it's not just for authors who can't find a publisher anymore. The Guardian reports how author Mark Edwards self-published his book The Magpies after working with HarperCollins to publish Forward Slash. For Edwards, it was a matter of expediency.
"When I finished The Magpies earlier this year I was keen to get it out quickly, partly because I wanted to build momentum before Forward Slash came out, and also because I wanted to see if I could do it successfully again," Edwards said.
The results speak for themselves.
"It's gone far better than I expected," said Edwards. "So far, The Magpies has sold over 130,000 copies and has been in the top 10 for over two months."
Dealing with Distribution
Certainly, there are drawbacks to POD. Perhaps the most cited is that without a major publisher behind it, a title will never arrive in stores en masse, but thanks to online book sales and the rise of e-book publishing, in-store sales simply aren't as important as they used to be.
A Time article on the burgeoning self-publishing industry reported that e-book self-publishing is growing at four times the rate of other forms of self-publishing - and some authors are making more money that way.
"Since 2010, [author Bella] Andre--whose real name is Nyree Belleville--has self-published 17 e-books, many of them from her backlist of old novels, to which she retained the digital rights," wrote Andrew Rice for Time. "She claims she has sold over a million copies so far this year, making $2.4 million."
With access and author control on the "cons" list for traditional publishing, and affordability making self-publishing difficult at large-run presses, the negatives for POD self-publishing can be put in perspective. Besides, when given the choice between wrestling with distribution issues and not publishing at all, many authors in the new wave of writers-as-solopreneurs are jumping onto POD publishing as a low-cost, low-labor way to turn their creative pursuits into profitable products. And that, it turns out, could be saving the publishing industry as well as the authors.
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