How Do You Know When You’re Ready to Graduate from DIY eBook Publishing?
Joe Mangan, Chief Operating Officer for Perseus Books Group and Constellation Digital Services 
 
The promise of do-it-yourself publishing can be understandably attractive to publishers and authors: you sign up, you upload your file, and there’s your book ready for download. There are many circumstances when in fact it does make the most sense, especially as a starting point. However, there are also many situations when a broader partner focused on professional authors makes more sense. The self-publishing process is not as simple or powerful as it seems, and publishers risk losing control, flexibility and most importantly sales in such a model. 

How do you know when a single-retailer service is no longer right for you? At what point does a publisher’s business model no longer justify using these bootstrap ebook publishing services?  Here are five signs that you’re ready for a full service provider:

1.      When your business evolves from push to pull.

In push selling you tell your buyers where to buy the book. This is often the case in lecture-driven or curriculum-adopted titles. For example, an author who reaches his audience primarily via speaking engagements or from his own website can specifically direct buyers to that single retailer (and product page) where the book can be purchased. But when a book starts to be discovered beyond the direct reach of the author or publisher – for instance via publicity, word of mouth, or online search – it needs to be everywhere. When readers hear an interview on the radio, they will seek the book on the platform of their choice, not yours. This is when you risk missing sales because your ebook isn’t available from a broad set of retailers and popular e-reading platforms.

A single-retailer scenario may have been fine a year or two ago when there were only a couple of e-retailers you had to work with to cover nearly the whole market, but in today’s digital age you risk losing sales by not diversifying. The number of retailers has increased and the market share of even the most successful is dropping. With pull-driven titles, its time to look for help when you begin to wonder, “How many sales am I losing by being on only one platform?” 

2.      When the author expects the book to be available everywhere.

As publishers know well, authors expect you to help promote their books and make them available to the public. Most publishers are familiar with the perennial author complaint “I was at [fill in the blank] retailer and I didn’t see my book.” When authors expect their publishers to be full service, not being on all the platforms is problematic. Furthermore, there are a few e-retailers that won’t allow you to self-publish and there are vendors that won’t talk to you unless you’re a certain size (they’ll push you to an aggregator). In order to meet your authors’ expectations and make their ebooks available everywhere, it’s worth considering a full-service digital partner.

3. When you have a book with clear breakout potential that needs to be merchandised.
Another challenge in working with self-publishing platforms is the difficulty of merchandising.  Relative to major e-retailers, publishers are small and numerous. It can be difficult to get attention from major e-retailers, even for a book that’s a big deal for you or your company. The direct-publishing programs of many of these e-retailers are specifically designed to be low-touch/self-service, so there is no customer service rep to talk to. To get merchandising attention for a breakout title, especially early, there needs to be a relationship between a rep and the e-retailer. You need a rep that can call up the vendor and make a compelling case for feature treatment or inclusion in Buy X Get Y promotions, and then set it up. The same holds true if you want to make a change to a book’s listing on the e-retailer site. Book listing errors are highly visible and can become a major pain point with authors. Getting errors fixed through direct programs can be difficult and slow-going. By turning to a full-service partner, you can take advantage of having a rep to get the vendor on the phone and fix the problem promptly.

4. When your books fall outside the parameters of the direct program.
Most single-retailer self publishing services have parameters you have to meet in order for them to accept your ebook file. In some cases you cannot price your ebook above a certain threshold, or you need to own world rights in order to submit the file. If you are in one of these programs and haven’t read the fine print, read it. The challenge for publishers and authors develops when they have a product with opportunities outside of these constraining parameters.  What if your ebook can hold a higher price point, leading to greater sales revenue for you? Full service partners provide the flexibility to price accordingly or sell an ebook that may not have world rights (but does at least have U.S. and E.U. rights). In general, the broader a publisher’s needs, the more need they have of a broad partner.

5. When your publishing becomes more than just a hobby – when it becomes a business.
Publishers and authors should be mindful about the investment of time required to manage (and keep up with) the technological and business requirements of their retail partner or partners.  Publishing an ebook is more than uploading a file to a website. It requires doing ePub conversions that can fail to pass specs, and knowing what to do if your ebook didn’t pass the strict specs parameters. It means getting the right information about your book listed on the e-retailer site. It means knowing how to read statements and decipher e-sales reports. The files you submit have to meet vendor specs and go live, and then you need to get transactional files back and enter them into a royalty system so you can pay royalties on them. This complexity grows exponentially when you go from one to two to three to four vendors, quickly consuming an already busy day. 

If you’re spending more than four hours a week thinking about technical issues or finance and reporting issues or you find yourself in a constant loop of converting, uploading, tracking, and processing, then you’re ready to switch to a full-service digital provider.  Put simply, at ten ebooks a year, this is more than just a hobby – it’s a business. 

The truly revolutionary aspect of today’s ebook is ubiquitous access – any device, anywhere, any time. Someone tells you about a book, you pull out your device and buy it, and you’re reading it within 60 seconds. Behind that simple consumer experience is generally a lot of work by a full-service partner to deliver on the operational reality of true ubiquity.