Your first step in creating a vision for your self-published book is to answer this question: Am I creating this book to fulfill a burning passion or am I doing it to make a buck? Am I in it for the love or the money?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. Or rather, you are the only one who knows what the right answer is for you. But once you know the answer, it guides you through a lot of other questions you’ll be asked (and you will need to ask yourself).
But wait! I can hear you saying, I want to do both. I love what I am writing about, and I want to make money too. Most authors, especially the ones who self publish, are motivated by a combination of love and money. As someone working them, I won’t have it any other way.
Let’s take a trip along the For Love or Money continuum.
- You’ve seen those House Painting/Accounting/Brain Surgery for Dufuses books. Lately you’ve been thinking, I could do that. Once you pick a topic, you plan to interview a few experts, organize the information, get someone to create an easy-to-understand design. Then, you’ll have a sure money maker.
- You are a professional speaker and life coach. You’ve been using handouts made on your home copier to accompany your talks and support your coaching clients. But now you want a book. Maybe a workbook, you can’t decide. You need something that is more professional looking, something your attendees can take with them and refer to, something that will maybe serve as marketing for you coaching business.
- You have a collection of recipes, everything from your great-grandma’s secret fruitcake recipe to your own award-winning blueberry jam. Pulling them all together has been a labor of love, but you hope you can see it in local bookstores and get some attention on local radio talk shows.
- You are a poet. You’ve been reading your poems at local coffeehouses and poetry slams. Now, you want to have a small bound collection to sell at the table when you are done reading.
- You’ve been interviewing your parents and grandparents for years. You finally have the story of how your family came to the United States and settled in the Midwest down on paper and you want to preserve it for future generations. You want to have books to hand out at the next family reunion.
How does this effect the choices you will be making?
If you are firmly at the Money end of the continuum, you need to look getting an ISBN, maybe a block of them. You need to know how to get into bookstores. You might want to work with a designer to develop a look for business cards, some marketing pieces and maybe a possible series. You need to consider how the book’s binding will hold up to repeated use. You will want to research your competition and develop a marketing plan. You will need to weigh the cost of all this against your projected profit.
If you are firmly at the Love end, very little of that matters. You will, however, need to know how much time and money you can put into your book. Your decisions will not be based on profitability, but rather what you want the final product to be like. Full color pictures on the inside will drive up the price, but it’s worth it to capture those memories. Cover art created by your five year old nephew wouldn’t sell any books, but it sure would make Grandma happy.
If you are somewhere between the two ends, your answers will take a little more consideration. Maybe it doesn’t look like you book will be an instant hit, but you are willing to take a financial loss for a while because you really believe in the message. Or maybe you don’t need to make a profit, just cover your expenses.
Too many resources — websites, books, discussion groups — assume everyone is self publishing for the same reason. Their tips have a generic quality. The advice is “one size fits all.” And just like with clothing, the result is it does not quite fit anyone.
When you know what you want — when you have a clear vision for your book — you will be better able to sort through the information offered and find the solution that is right for you.
