[?] Subscribe To This Site
Fu Fu's for President Obama and Diversity Publishing
by Dr Robert Spalding
The Adventure of the Golden Toenails
Self publishing by Waldenhouse After investigating the traditional publishing route, it was my feeling that if this book is going to live/market well or die, it would die in my hands and not in the hands of others. The royalty payment structure, the time before printing and the lack of a literary agent made self publishing the best route. Forming my own publishing company called the Chattanooga Fu Fu Factory was really not hard; nor was writing the material that difficult. But the editing was tremendously expensive. Illustrated books in color with the best binding are the most expensive type of book to print and the most difficult book property to market. The competition is so huge that unless you are a celebrity, blessed with a huge advertising budget or co-marketing an incredible niche toy product, you will almost never make your money back in the first year or two unless you look out over a 5 to 10 year horizon. Do not count on your book feeding your family. Don’t do it unless you can afford it. That is my best advice I set up a booth at the Javits Center in NYC for toy fair which is not cheap. Several manufactures approached me but as a newcomer, they had the advantage of cost factoring and production. That still seems to be the case, but I am a bit more savvy now. Entering this business with the same delusions of grandeur that most people who have little knowledge of the publishing industry have has been a real education. The book has had some success being purchased for public consumption with several libraries who purchase mainly due to a nice paragraph in Midwest Book Review. The book was briefly picked up by Penton Overseas, a book distributor who had only marginal success with my book and then dropped it 6 months later. Undeterred, I tried Amazon when I realized I could set up a Pay Pal just as well as Amazon. My final advice, get a website, email anyone who will look at your project, give away a few pages to tease and keep showing it to anyone who will read it or critique it. Schools and libraries are a good start. We also have a 30 seond animated movie on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1ayOIiROz0 ...but all this cost money. Keep at it and continue to improve your marketing delivery. 5% of us will make it, the rest will be buried with our books in hand. With those odds, you are ready to meet this industry head on. Visit The Kingdom of Fu Fu.
|
