Subsidy Publishers versus Self Publishing

A subsidy publisher (sometimes called "vanity" publisher) is a publishing company who will publish an author's book for a charge. They will often handle all of the set up and production part of publishing the book such as interior and cover design, assigning an ISBN, distribution to booksellers and sometimes will offer marketing services. Subsidy publishers will usually pay the author royalties on books that are sold but they take a percentage of the profit on book sales. The only thing most of them require on their part is a manuscript.

Pros:

On the plus side a subsidy publisher can take care of everything for you. If you do not have access to the software needed to produce a book, don't have the knowledge, experience or time to do the work needed yourself then you may want to look at a subsidy publisher to handle all of that for you. Just hand them your book manuscript and they will handle just about everything else.

Cons:

Subsidy publishing services can be very expensive, up to thousands of dollars. In addition to the upfront cost most of them will retain a part of the profit from the book sales. They can also have contracts that may not be the best thing for a self publishing author such as signing over various rights to your book. Be sure to read the fine print on any contract you sign with a subsidy printer. If possible look for a subsidy publisher that lets you retain all rights to your work and allows you to end your relationship with them at any time with no penalty. You will want to be able to take your book elsewhere to be published if you are not happy with their services down the road or if you are approached by a traditional publishing company that is interested in your book. Books that are published through a subsidy publisher are sometimes looked down on by people in the book industry.

Some example of subsidy publishers are: AuthorHouse, iUniverse, Trafford and Xlibris.

What is self publishing?

When you self publish you are taking full control of your work, retain all rights and do all of the work yourself. You are responsible for the formatting, layout and design of your book. This does not necessarily mean that you have to do the work yourself, you can always hire someone to do the work for you without giving up any rights to your book. When a book is sold you receive the money directly without having to share a percentage of the sale with a publisher.

You are responsible for acquiring and assigning your own ISBN to the book. A block of 10 ISBNs can be obtained through http://www.isbn.org. Once you have the book document formatted, the cover art and the ISBN you will take your book to a printer or book producer who can take your finished documents and print copies of your book. This can either be a traditional offset or a print on demand printer. It is a good idea to find a printer for your book before it is formatted since they will often require your documents to be set up a certain way.

Once you have your book's printed you will need to work on getting them distributed to booksellers. You can look at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble to see about getting your book listed for sale on their sites (see How do I get my book listed on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.com in our faq). You may also be able to get your book listed in some of the large book distributors such as Ingram which many booksellers use to order books. Or you can decide to sell your book directly to your customers.

Pros:

Retain full control and rights to your book. No sharing of the money made when a book is sold, all sales go to you. While the upfront costs can be expensive, it can be considerably less expensive then going through a subsidy publisher.

Cons:

Requires more work and time on your end. Need to have access to software such as a word processor and graphic design program and know how to use them effectively or be willing and able to afford to hire someone who does. Can be harder to get your book listed in distribution channels.

What is a book printer?

A book printer is basically a printing service that prints books. They may also offer some other services and sometimes refer to themselves as publishers but their core business is printing books. A book printer will not require authors to sign over any rights to their book and will generally not handle sales or distribution (although some may offer this as an additional service) or keep any of the profit when a book is sold. They can either be set up as a print on demand or a traditional offset printer. Print on demand book printers will allow authors to order smaller quantities of books at a time and reorder when needed while offset printers will require a large run of books to be printed in one order. They will not store or warehouse the books or ship them to your customers but will deliver them to you directly.

If you are self publishing instead of taking your book to a subsidy publisher you will need to find a book printer to produce copies of your book.

Many self publishing authors take their work to Lightning Source which is a Print on Demand printer who will distribute your book through Ingram (Lightning Source is a part of Ingram) as well as let you order copies of the book for you to distribute and sell yourself.

Other publishing models

There are a few places out there that deal with publishing and printing books that don't seem to fit into any of the above models. Lulu allows authors to upload a formatted book manuscript to them and set up a store on their site to sell copies of their book. They do not charge any fees to do this and they do not retain any rights to the books but instead they take part of the money made when a book is sold. They handle the billing, shipping and printing of the book and will send the author a check for the money made for sales (minus their small fee per book sold). If the author does not have a book cover they can choose from a pre made design or pay to have them create a cover for their book. They also offer some subsidy publishing services such as an ISBN service which will have them assign one of their ISBN numbers to the author's book and an ISBN Plus service that will assign an ISBN and get it listed in a major distribution channel which will make it available to online book sellers such as Amazon.com.

Pros:

No cost to use their services. You retain all rights to work. Provides an online presence where people can buy your book. No need to worry about billing the customer or shipping of your book.

Cons:

Cost per book is more expensive than other means. In order to make a decent amount of profit on sales of your book you need to set the price of your book higher than what some people may be willing to buy it for. Book is only available through Lulu.com unless you purchase their ISBN Plus package. While the costs of ordering copies of the book for yourself is less than a customer would be charged, the price per book is still a bit high.

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