Before there were online publishing websites, self-publishers did things a little differently. Self-publishing bore a striking resemblance to traditional publishing, except the authors wore every hat and did all of the work by themselves - unless they had the budget for some extra help.
Self-publishing with POD publishing, or print-on-demand publishing, is similar in some ways to online publishing in that you can still hire an artist, editor, and even book marketer if you have the funds to do so. The difference however, is that if you self-publish through any of the many online publishing websites, like Amazon, you will only get a fraction of the book sales, and you sacrifice your rights to the book - typically for the duration of your contract, and those contracts often stipulate exclusivity. Which means that if you can't make it there, you're not allowed to make it anywhere.
So yes, in traditional self-publishing, you have to handle everything – and the list of tasks is a very long one. However with the right guidance, a bit of elbow-grease, and some money set-aside for printing costs, you will also retain all of the rights to your book, you can sell it anywhere and any way you want, and you keep all of the money you make from your sales.
Some of the things that an author needs to handle for POD publishing include:
The main difference in POD publishing other than the work involved however, is that you need to have a budget available for printing your book. Online publishing houses require nothing up-front and simply take all of the costs from your sales. Print on demand publishing in contrast, requires that you pay for the cost of printing the books up-front.
Setting-up the presses for book printing costs the same amount whether you're printing 100 books (a short-run) or 1,000 books (a long-run), so make sure that you have the largest portion of your budget set-aside for the printing of your book.
Before determining how many copies you'll need, consider where you'll be selling your book and how much you're willing to spend for the first printing. After all, if the book does well you can always order more copies.
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