For anyone who wants to benefit from publishing, and especially for businesses, it is critically important to follow publishing best practices to ensure quality and control costs. Get an editor who understands proofreading and a designer who is experienced with books and knows how to prepare reliable press-ready files. The same is true with printers. Only use a printer who understands books.
This advice is true even if you plan to sell your books directly through your own business or website. Even if you don’t need a win over distributors, book reviewers, or store owners, printing a book with embarrassing mistakes or paying for files that don’t work correctly is just bad business practice.
If you do want a book distributor, and book reviewers and store owners do matter to you, then it becomes even more critical to make sure your book is trade quality, meets retail requirements, and meets industry expectations. Find someone experienced who knows the process and can guide you through each step.
The old low-quality vanity publishing business model has given way to a new low-quality model that cuts costs and quality to sell authors printing services—usually print on demand (POD). To avoid the pit falls of these companies, find a book service that doesn’t profit from printing. You should be able to send your book files to any printer of your choice.
When you look at the costs outlined in my post The Math Publishers Don’t Want Authors to Know!, you’ll notice that cutting out quality production and quality controls—such as professional editing, design, and typesetting—doesn’t save much money, certainly not enough for the increased difficulty of selling a less attractive and less professional product.
For businesses, a DIY book is an especially high risk that can involve embarrassments and brand damage. I know a guy who self-published without using a professional editor or book designer. The largest American membership-only warehouse club was ready to carry his photo book until the buyer saw that the foreword in the book was spelled “Forward.” Seeing that one error, they suspected the DIY quality and dropped the offer. All it took was one word to undo the deal—an error spell checker software would not catch. Quality matters! He came back with a second book project done professionally, and they carried it, agreeing to start by taking 1700 copies. Persistence and a new commitment to quality paid off.
Remember, you may only have to sell around 280 copies to cover your costs for B&W books and around 550 for color books. His book was a hardback picture book, so he needed to sell slightly more. Of course, if you are not confident that you can sell more than 300–600 copies, using print-on-demand and/or publish ebook editions may be safer strategies for you. To learn more watch for my forthcoming post, Picking the Right Publishing Strategy.