Subsidy Publishing Versus Self-publishing: a Clarification
Subsidy Publishing
There is a lot of confusion lately regarding the definition of “self-publishing.” Many authors think they have self-published, when in fact they have not.
Subsidy Publishers often refer to themselves and “self-publishing” companies, and offer “self-publishing” services for authors. They intentionally obfuscate the definition of the word, because they are running from the term “vanity press.”
Subsidy Publishers take money to publish your book for you. They act in many ways as a traditional publisher might, however, they do not put their own money on the line and their primary customer is the author, not the book buyer.
Learn about self publishing your book from the experts. Available @ Amazon.com
When you publish via a Subsidy Press, they are technically the Publisher of Record because they own the ISBN number. They cannot (and will not) sell you the number, give you the number, or assign ownership of the number to you. As long as they own the ISBN, they are the publisher. You did not self-publish. You paid someone to publish you. The only way for you to own the ISBN is for you to buy it from the only ISBN broker in the US; Bowkers.
One major disadvantage of Subsidy publishing is the Price Per Unit of the final product. Subsidy Publishing is not efficient, and the cost per individual book printed that you will pay will be so high so as to price it out of your market. You must have the flexibility to price your book based on a competitive market, not based on production cost.
Another disadvantage is the negative effect a Subsidy Publisher owned ISBN will have on your chances of getting reviewed by the major pre-publication reviewers. It is very difficult to get a book reviewed by the major reviews. If your book is subsidy published, your chances become zero. They will not consider it.
This is not to say that there are not situations where subsidy publishing would not be a suitable choice. If you have a book of local, or family interest and you know you will be able to sell a certain number to a group of people regardless of the cost, then it may be the way to go. Also, if you are just looking to see your book in print and aren’t worried about selling them to large numbers of people, then you might also select a subsidy publishing (this is, by definition, vanity publishing. If that is your interest, it’s probably best to accept it and publish accordingly).
However, if your intentions are in any way to market your book and make money as a publisher, I urge you to consider “true self-publishing.”
Some subsidy presses include: PublishAmerica, AuthorHouse, Lulu, Xlibris, and many others.
Self-Publishing
A self-published book is one that has truly been published by its author. There is a long tradition of very successful authors who have gotten their start by forming their own imprint and publishing their own books.
Self-publishing entails more work, but in the end the results will be much more satisfactory. You will have had control over the creative process, as well as all budgetary concerns.
You will have purchased your own ISBN, and will thus be the Publisher of Record. You will have sought out a cover and layout designer whose work you like and respect. You will have hired a printer that is able to offer a Per Unit Cost that will allow you to set a cover price that matches your market. You will make an actual, reasonable profit on the sale of your book. You will own your own imprint, and will be considered a “small press,” or and “independent publisher,” and so will have a chance of getting reviewed in by the major publications.
Self-publishing is not to be taken on lightly. It is, in essence, starting a new business. This can seem like a daunting task, when done concurrently with the release of a new book. However, as compared to subsidy publishing, it is the only way to publish your book in a way that will give it a chance of success in the extremely volatile publishing world.
There are many really great books on self-publishing. You should select a few and study them before making any decision as to how you are planning on publishing.
POD, or, Print On Demand
There is also some confusion as to the term POD, or Print On Demand. Many authors refer to subsidy publishers as “PODs.” This is entirely inaccurate, and will cause you some embarrassment when talking to the indie publishing community.
Print on Demand is a printing technology used by many publishers of all stripes. Indy presses, small publishers, subsidy presses, church cookbooks, even some of the traditional publisher’s backlogs, all utilize Print On Demand technology.
About the Author:
Brad Grochowski is the founder and owner of AuthorsBookshop.com. He is also the author of The Secret Weakness of Dragons.
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Not only are subsidy publishers not “self-publishing companies,” they’re not really subsidy publishers, either.
In other fields, such as subsidized housing, subsidized child care, subsidized transportation, subsidized agriculture, subsidized education, etc., a government, employer or organization pays part of the cost of a service, and the user of the service pays part.
In the strange world of subsidy publishing, the user (author) pays the entire cost of publishing.
There is NO SUBSIDY in subsidy publishing.
It’s particularly ironic that, publishing — which depends on words — so frequently misuses them.
Also, technically POD is not a “printing technology.” It’s a business method. Although POD is usually done with high-speed laser presses, POD could be done with offset, letterpress, or even a quill on parchment.
Michael N. Marcus
Author of “Become a Real Self Publisher”
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From what I just read, are you suggesting we do not go with self publishing companies like CreateSpace?
I would like your feedback on that. I just did and having some reservations now.
Thanks
@ Michael Marcus
You are correct. What people try to pass off as subsidy publishing today is really just glorified book printing. In the past, true subsidy publishers would pay half and the author would pay half. In addition, subsidy publishers were just like regular publishers in that they actually screened the books that came across their desks to make sure they were putting out something that would sell. They wanted to make their money back.
Today’s “Subsidy Publishers” do nothing more than print the book. They don’t do any screening, editing or marketing. The onus is on the author to make sure their book reads well, is edited correctly and to market the book. You may as well be a self publisher.
It’s sad how marketers have mislead writers in such a way but the only thing that can combat that is education.
@ Cathy
From what I understand CreateSpace is the same as LuLu. They are just book printers. It looks like they do have some helpful services that you can pay for such as editing and it looks like they will handle shipping of the book. But in the end, it’s all on you to make sure your book reads well and to market and sell it. Additionally, unless you purchase an ISBN, you will be published under theirs which can limit what you can do with the book.
The biggest problem with places like Createspace is that in order to get a good price on your books and therefore sell them at a decent price to your customers is that you have to buy them in bulk. With LuLu one 200 page book (perfect bound, 6×9 paperback) costs $8.50.
If you want to make money on your book, you have add a few dollars on top of that. How much you add depends on who/where you are selling them. If you are selling them out of the trunk of your car direct to the reader then you might be okay selling them at $10 or $11. And I emphasize might because you would be competing against other similar books selling at $7-$8 that were produced by commercial publishers.
However, if you want to sell your books to bookstores you would have to price your book at a minimum of $21.25 to cover the cost of your book because bookstores require a minimum of a 40% discount off the list price before they will even consider putting your book on their shelves. If you want to make money on your book, you would have to price it even higher than that.
If you want your 200 page book to sell at a reasonable price you would have to buy 1000 copies of your book which would bring the individual price down to $4.80 making the minimum list price you could sell it for to recoup your costs $12.00.
I couldn’t find the per book price for CreateSpace but I doubt they are much better.
I think places like CreateSpace and LuLu are fine if you are selling a specialized product that your target market would buy regardless of the cost and if you are not looking to get your book into bookstores. However most authors are trying to sell mass market paperback fiction books and want to get them on the shelves of Borders and Barnes&Noble and therefore are not best served by these types of websites.
I hope this helps Cathy. Good luck.
Arwen Taylor
Very good article. I keep saying the same things, but, unfortunately a lot of people only hear what they want to hear. And many just want a book in a hurry, and aren’t really willing to spend the time learning what they need to know.
Hi NJ Lindquist,
I know. I read author blogs and the only thing many of them can think of is getting that book in their hands. And the problem is compounded by the mistaken belief that once they have a book, they will sell millions and be the next JK Rowling. It’s crazy but as long as people won’t listen, I guess these companies will continue to flourish.
Arwen Taylor
>The biggest problem with places like Createspace is that in order to get a good price on your books and therefore sell them at a decent price to your customers is that you have to buy them in bulk.
This is not correct. I can buy a single copy of a 300 page book from CreateSpace for about $4.50. If I get an order through Amazon with a selling price of $14.95, my “royalty” is about $3.50. I don’t have to buy in quantity.
Hi Jesse,
Thanks for stopping by and sharing your pricing information. According to Createspace’s book cost calculator a 6 inch x 9 inch 300 page (which is your average trade paperback) book costs $7.50. If you upgrade to their Pro Plan, $39 per book title the first year and $5.00 per book title each year after, your cost per book goes down to $4.45.
However, that $39 still needs to be included in the cost per book price. Therefore, purchasing one book will really cost you $43.45. To bring that cost down to a decent level, you would have to purchase at least 39 books which would spread the cost of that Pro plan to $1.00 per book and putting your actual cost at $5.45 per book. If you purchased 78 books, your per costs price would come down to $4.95 and so on and so forth.
They say there are no set up costs involved with publishing your book but I haven’t been able to determine if you are required to purchase one of their service packages in order to get them to publish your book.
Even if they are not required to purchase a service package, most authors will because they have no experience with designing a book cover etc. Therefore the cost of that package needs to also be included in the per price cost of the books.