originally published in Lawyers Weekly
Dean Fueroghne, vice president and creative director for Critical Mass Creative Group in Pasadena, CA, attended UCLA law school after years as a creative professional. “On the first day of advertising law class, the professor announced that there was no textbook for the class since nobody had ever written it,” he recalls.
So Fueroghne started a journal, received encouragement from colleagues in the advertising industry and advice from a friend who had written books, wrote the book, found an agent and got his book published.
Fueroghne returned to advertising and went on to have six books published by “credible” publishers. His book, Law and Advertising, is now a textbook at 30 universities.
While he still seeks to spread valuable information about his industry, Fueroghne became jaded with traditional publishers, decrying business practices that he was no longer willing to accept.
“It was extremely difficult to get information about the sales of the book, to get paid for the book,” he says. “In one case, it took me three years to get my royalty payments.”
That problem doesn’t plague him now. “I just go online, view my account and see the books I sold this week, and I get my cash when people buy the book,” he said.
Fueroghne has joined a growing group of writers who self-publish and sell their works through online stores such as Lulu.com, Amazon.com’s CreateSpace and Blurb.com — cutting out traditional publishers and distributors in the process.
Also known as print-on-demand (POD), self-publishing businesses offer authors who might not get published elsewhere the chance to upload their books to a web site and offer them for sale without the blessing of traditional publishers.
POD services can make the business side of publishing much easier. They commonly offer online payment systems, online bookstores, web marketing tools, formatting and editorial advice and placement with other online retailers.
Some of these services come at a price, but authors like Toronto-based freelance writer and media trainer Paul Lima have managed to publish books without spending a cent. He does add one caveat: “It’ll cost you time. You still have to write the sucker.”
“The kinds of books that I think are most appropriate for self-publishing are very highly specialized books on specialized topics that have specialized markets,” says Doug Pepper, the president and publisher of McClelland & Stewart Ltd. “With the Internet, where you can contact people of like minds who are doing similar things, that’s where it makes sense.”
The traditional publishing route lures authors using a number of incentives. Traditional publishers often pay authors advances on their royalties, distribute their tomes anywhere in Canada that books are sold, use their marketing and publicity machine to spur sales, and do other things that many writers have neither the time, expertise or desire to do themselves.
These lures, however, serve no purpose if authors cannot hurdle the publisher’s review process. “We have tons of book submissions coming in at any given time,” Pepper says. “I only have time to look at books coming from big agents who know me.”
Fueroghne doubts the marketing efforts argument. “If you publish 300 titles a year, you’re going to put the bulk of your money behind the big names that will bring in the revenue,” he said.
Income can also spur authors to self-publish. Authors typically pay POD publishers printing costs and a percentage of gross profit, and keep the rest.
When Lima compared his Lulu arrangement to the 10 per cent royalty he could have had from a traditional publisher on sales of 2,000 books, on the condition that he remove his books from Lulu, his math told him he could make as much money by selling 200 books on Lulu.
Fueroghne says his royalty has risen to 30 or 40 per cent from the 15 that traditional publishers netted him.
Lima’s books also dovetail with his other business activities, like teaching workshops. “When I teach courses on business writing, having books gives me credibility,” he says. “When dealing with corporate clients, I can leave them a book that they can put in their library. I do that as a surprise, a bonus.”
“I use my books to build my workshop credibility and I use my workshops to sell my books. They go hand in hand.”
Pepper recognizes the upside of self-publishing for people like Lima, noting that authors are more business-savvy than ever. “As passionate as I am about the books we sell, I don’t have my name on them,” he says. “Very often that translates to selling the book in a way that the publisher can’t sell it.”
“A lot of self-published writers believe they can do a better job, and depending on the subject matter of the book, sometimes they can.”