Vanity publishing
March 18, ‘07
Story by Richard Parks

  Many people have asked me for information about how to publish their memoirs or racing experiences. They have a burning desire to leave behind a record of their life to the next generation, but don’t quite know how to do it. A bit of research into the subject was quite revealing. There are four ways to publish your work. The first is to type it out and then print it on your computer’s printer. You can make as many copies as you wish and the cost is very reasonable. You have the flexibility of printing one or as many copies as you like, whenever the need arises. You can also make corrections so that each new copy is more perfect than the one before, which you cannot do with a big printing company. The second method is to create your history and then place it on-line with a web service that will sell your work over the internet. Readers review your work, then send in their payment to the on-line service, which sends them a code allowing them to use their printers to download your work right off the internet. The third method is to take your work and print it out on your home printer, then take it to a copy service and have them xerox as many copies as you desire. These Kinko type copy companies can also sell you inexpensive folder covers to hold the pages in a sort of soft cover format and make them look more impressive. These three ways are relatively inexpensive and allow you to make as many copies as you wish, for about the same unit price. You won’t have spent a lot of money, but you will have all the copies you feel you can sell or give away.

   Then there is Vanity Publishing. Most people like to pick up and hold hard cover books that have a feeling of permanence and good looks. Vanity Publishing is the term used in the publishing and printing industry to define a work that is self funded by the individual and not by a large publishing company. There are two ways to get your book published. The first way entails having a publishing company pay you for your book and take upon itself the cost of printing, editing, promoting and selling your work. It’s very rare for that to happen, because those in the publishing industry know what will sell and what won’t, and volume is the key to whether they will publish a book or not. If your work has the potential to sell 50,000 copies, then a publisher may offer you a contract. They will own the work and all subsequent printings; in return you will receive a stipulated sum and a percentage of the overall sales of the book. If you have “legs,” that is you are well known to the public, have scandalous tales to tell about those in the limelight, or have a unique perspective, then having a publisher buy your work is a distinct possibility. But more likely your story is regional, local, or suited to a small audience and it will be difficult to find a market large enough to attract the interest of a publisher. Not that your story isn’t interesting, well written or packed with excitement and action, but it just doesn’t have a large enough audience to make it worth the publisher’s time to pick up your option and offer you a contract.

   That leaves the other alternative; self-publishing or what is called Vanity Publishing. You, the author will have to pay to have your work published and printed. You will have to do much of the writing and editing yourself. You will have to provide a ready-to-print version of your work on an acceptable computer page-layout program (Indesign, Quark) to give to the printer, but avoid Microsoft Word. If the printer is local, then you can pick up your books and bring them home, or pay for shipping and handling. Then you will have to promote your book, take phone, email and mail orders and ship them out. Sometimes you can sell your books at swap meets, reunions, cruises, fairs and other gatherings. But promoting your book is a hard and difficult task at best.

The advantage in self-publishing is that you can control some of your costs and all of your material. No one will tell you what to say or how to present it to the public. You have complete control over your work. I spoke to Jack Stewart, the author of The L. A. Roadsters, an Introspective, and he told me that although he enjoyed writing the book, that “advertising was a bitch. It sometimes cost me more to advertise than I got back in sales, although some people gave me free ad time, which helped out a lot.” He worked with Jim Clark, who is a partner in the Tex Smith Automotive Library. I called Clark, who works out of a small town in Southern Utah, and who has an extensive background in the print media and publishing. Clark, Ron Ceridono and Tex Smith form the company and they have been promoting and publishing books for over thirty years. Clark explained that a publisher has built in advantages that the vanity self-publisher does not have. “If a publisher picks up your book then they have a network for selling your books that the individual doesn't have." They sell their books through major distributors like Motorbooks in Wisconsin, who in turn sell in volume to companies like Barnes and Noble. Tex Smith Automotive Library also sells to distributors, dealers, off their own website and advertise extensively in magazines. They also attend car shows, conventions and other major automotive events where they sell large numbers of books and how-to manuals.

   Clark explained that a printer and a publisher are not the same thing. “A publisher will have a graphic designer put your work together in a page-layout program using the format that a printer will be able to use to print the book,” he said. Publishers may also edit, revise, change, alter and correct any mistakes in your manuscript and it might cost you three to five thousand dollars or more for this service. But if the author is fairly good with grammar and can master the Indesign or Quark program then he can save that amount of money and have a finished product ready to go to the printer. Clark explained how the presses handle the rolls of paper as they go through the printing process. As many as 96 pages at a time are printed, then the machine cuts them and folds them into the proper sequence. He said that they use Delta Printing Solutions in Valencia, California for much of their printing needs and gave me the phone number for Roger Butzen. “Call and speak to Roger, because he’ll help you and he’s a car guy too,” said Clark. Minutes later I was talking to Butzen, whose office is in Orange, California and he answered my questions quickly and efficiently. I asked him how much it would cost to print a book with text and photos. “For a book that’s 8 ½ by 11 inches, containing black and white and approximately 192 pages in total, about $2.02,” he said, “for 5000 copies in a soft cover format.” I asked him how come it was so cheap and he laughed, “we’ll charge you more then if you want us too.” Roger went on to say that the more copies you order the cheaper the costs. “It’s only $1.61 per book if you order 10,000 copies,” he said. I was vainly thinking that I could do that, except for the fact that I didn’t have a book yet.

   Butzen added, “and if you order 15,000 copies we can print them for $1.47 per book.” I quickly got the idea why they called it Vanity Publishing. I very much wanted to own 15,000 copies of anything that I could call my own, except for the nagging question of what to do with all of them. I asked him how could I transport 15,000 books in my small import car and he told me, “they’ll deliver it by truck. A local delivery only costs $225 and for longer deliveries they ship it to you.” I asked him if they could do a hardcover with a dust jacket and he said that was no problem. “Add about $5 per book for hard covers because it takes a special binding,” and he proceeded to tell me the process by which a soft cover book differs from a hard cover. The difference in price though is significant. 10,000 books in a soft cover format will run approximately $16,100 versus $66,100 for the same volume of hard cover books. “But the way to keep the costs down and get what you want is to order 100 of your books in a hard cover format and the rest as soft covers,” he told me. Color photos can be very expensive if they are distributed throughout the book, but there are ways to insert them in an insert that can make the price more reasonable. “It is hard to put a number on it because it depends on how many color photos there are and again on volume,” he added. I asked him what was the fewest number of books that he would print. “We’ll print you ten books if you want, but the unit cost might be rather high,” he said. “For example, if you only ordered 1000 books then the cost jumps to $5.40 per book. It’s all based on volume when you get to a printer,” he added. I thanked him and we hung up and I pondered what he had said. It’s easy to have your work of love published and printed and you can get a lot of help or do it yourself. It will cost you exactly what you are willing to pay and for the quantity and quality that you want. The publishers and graphic designers will give you a finished look for around $5000 or less, and the printer has prices that range from a few hundred dollars to tens of thousands.

   The final task after you have paid your money and received your books is how to sell them, and there is no easy answer to that. The more people you mention and the more stories you add the more interest there will be in the marketplace. What you will have to factor in is that time and money to promote and advertise your book will be as much or more than the publishing, editing and printing of your book, unless you get creative and find ways to sell the book. You can sell the book on-line, through e-Bay auctions, by phone and through flyers and notices. You can attend reunions, car shows, cruises and automotive events and sell them one at a time. I can remember when Robert ‘Pete’ Petersen used to go around the local garages with his new Hot Rod Magazine under his arms, trying to sell them. He would leave a few of the magazines and split the purchase price with the shop owner. Museums, shops, stores, garages and other places may offer to sell your books for you, but they will want 50% or more of the cover price to do that for you. Some stores may buy them outright for a deep discount, or sell them for you on consignment. If you order too few, then you will have to decide whether there is a market for a second edition. If you order too many because the price break was just too tempting, then you might have to park your wife’s car in the street for several years until you can finally sell enough books to make room. The vanity of being a published author may wane considerably when you look at cases of unused books stacked in your garage. Finally, at some point you will give some away and donate the rest to a museum or charitable cause. Tallying up your costs, expenses and time will show whether you made or lost money. But in Vanity publishing it really isn’t about money. It’s about creating something that is uniquely yours and something for the ages.
 
Richard Parks Gone Racin’ is at [email protected].