I want to welcome you to the blog of WhitakerSparks Publishing. We're an independent publisher dedicated to the proposition that self-published work can and should earn healthy profits for the author.
Far too many vanity publishing companies, none of whom need to be named, encourage writers to publish their work for fees averaging $2500 or more. Yet, they do little to nothing to help market the work. There's also no consultation up front about how to write a book that's legitimately appealing to a commercial market.
If you're an author seeking only to write a book that's read by your family and friends, fine. Go ahead and contact one of the many major self-publishing houses and spend that hefty fee exclusively for the joy of seeing your own name in print with your picture and bio on the back cover. You'll also enjoy the grand privilege of saying you "wrote a book". I have no problem if you go into the process with the knowledge and expectation that very few books will ever sell. But dare not dream you've just written a commercially viable product.
Publishing a book and selling a book are two entirely different processes.
A contact I have at one of the big vanity self-publishing companies recently shared a statistic you should know. A shocking 98% of all books published by their company end up selling fewer than 50 copies, and those sales are only to the author's family and friends. I wanted to ask this self-publishing company executive how she sleeps at night after taking advantage of so many aspiring author's who pay so much to get their books in print.
It's an obscene rip-off considering the way they market self-publishing to aspiring authors. If these companies promoted themselves as true "vanity" publishers only, then cool. But the marketing behind the big self-publishing companies makes it sound like you're going to finally get your book published, listed on Amazon, featured for Kindle, and even routinely included in the publisher's own online bookstore. The clear impression you get is that they're opening the door for you to publish AND sell books. It's just not so.
This is why my partner and I started WhitakerSparks Publishing (www.WhitakerSparks.com). We not only want to help people self-publish at the most affordable cost possible, but also help new authors promote their work to achieve sales. We're not famous authors of books. We're not literary names you should know. We're advertising professionals who have spent our entire lives devoted to marketing, branding and winning sales through media. That's what we do.
It all started recently when I had a book of my own that I wanted to self-publish. I do some trading of foreign currency (forex), and had written a book called Trajectory Forex. It details the methodology I use to identify trends for profit in forex, and it's selling pretty well in the niche category of people who trade forex. But, the lesson I learned about self-publishing when I got into investigating the possibilities were enough to change the color of my remaining dark hair.
First, as a 30 year veteran advertising copywriter and creative director, I know that the conversion of files for Kindle and Print On Demand (POD), the most common means of publishing a book for Amazon, is brutally simple and profoundly less costly than what was being charged by the big self-publishing companies. Indeed, I found their prices to be comical.
So, I contacted a couple friends, including my current publishing company partner, Ken Whitaker. We combined our talents and published my book at a fraction of what it would have otherwise cost. I don't recommend this independent publishing process for everyone. Amazon and Kindle requirements for files are pretty exacting. I have been told that people submit files for publication only to have them rejected time after time. Even one nationally recognized advertising blog author recently commented that his own book was rejected by Kindle no less than 8 times before he finally got the file right. (I suspect he was doing it himself as a writer, and failed to recognize the need for a graphic designer.)
Thanks to my knowledge of what's required to prep files and proof copy, I did some of the work myself and retained a few friends in graphic design to create the files based on specifications you can obtain absolutely free on the Internet. Honestly, if you have the set of skills at hand, it's not that monumentally difficult.
If you lack the skills or don't have access to graphic designers, people who can proof text, or professionals who can convert and prepare files to specifications, you can look into hiring those folks on your own either through a venue like Craigslist or our publishing company, WhitakerSparks.com. Yes, that's blatant self promotion. I will simply offer that we publish books at the lowest cost I've found anywhere in the business, so we're more than competitive with any group of freelancers you might assemble.
More importantly, relative to my publishing company, we will consult with you before you even start writing and then work with you to help achieve sales of the final published book. My Trajectory Forex title has pulled in just under $2000 worth of sales in the first three weeks. That's the singular result of smart marketing, contacting select people in the forex industry to create some buzz, creating my own website to promote the book, and listing it correctly on Amazon. I did my homework before putting the book out there, and I've still got marketing initiatives yet to launch that will increase exposure (and hopefully sales).
So let's just say you want to write a book. The big question is whether you just want to see your name in print, or are you truly seeking to create some respectable passive income? Cause once the book is written and put into the marketplace, the money just comes in "if" the marketing behind the book is smart, creative and strategic. Why bother with marketing? Consider the possibilities. If I write another 4 books that average just that humble $2000 a month net sales, I'll be sitting on a monthly income of about $10,000. That's not bad for thinking while you type.
Don't misinterpret my motivations. I'm not saying the only reason to write a book is to earn cash. I wrote my own book about forex largely to get credit for what I believe is a legitimately new way to identify trends in the market. At the same time, however, I have to be honest. I love making money. So marketing the book and being pleased with monthly profits is important to me. If you're the type of artist dedicated only to the work and disgusted by those of us with profit motivations, I have the greatest respect for you and your art. I wish you the best but still suggest you check out WhitakerSparks.
We started this publishing company specifically to help aspiring authors get published for less, and then see their work sold to more people versus merely sitting on an empty page at Amazon.com. So if you want to earn cash, or if you believe in your art, then sharing it with people who buy your book is a good thing. Earning profits is merely the result of more people enjoying the privilege of being exposed to your work.
For those of you starting out, I offer a few considerations.
First, never write about yourself unless you're Indiana Jones. (That's actually advice I heard from a friend, but I believe it to be profoundly true. Is your life story really going to captivate the attention of an audience out there?) You need to write about something that will appeal to a niche audience. In marketing, you can't sell everything to everyone. You must always target one specific audience and write to them. The more narrow the audience, the better. My book about trading forex is based on this simple philosophy. There's a small but passionate niche market of people interested in finding new ways to win profits in forex. I was able to write the book because I have a legitimately innovative methodology for identifying forex trends, and I've been using it to earn profits since 2006. Result? A book I could write that's now selling copies and earning profits.
This second point gets to the other key behind a commercially successful book. You must write about something you know. Get informed. Turn a hobby into a book. Take something at which you're professionally successful and turn it into a book. This could be anything from playing office politics to making sales to how to win money playing Texas Hold Em. There's an audience for truly endless content. The question is whether or not you write for yourself or you write for your audience.
Last in this set of three key tips is the reality that people don't buy books. People buy the idea tucked into the marketing behind the book. Do we judge books by their covers? Absolutely. One of the best ways to think about this is to ponder how many books you buy and never read. Maybe you're one of those people who actually reads every book that catches your eye on Amazon. Bless you if this is the case. I don't have that much time. So, I have a collection of books I found fascinating when I read the description on Amazon or heard about somewhere (that would be the whole marketing thing), and I keep promising myself I'm going to make time to read this one or that one. It's not the product that sells. It's the marketing behind that stack of books in my home office still gathering dust.
If you have great marketing and also happen to have a reasonably good book, then you may have a best seller on your hands. Just imagine.
So, whether you want to make some money with your words or just have a serious impact with an audience, write for that target audience. Write what you know. Then, when you publish, make sure you put some marketing and advertising behind the book. With today's world of social media, there's a vast spectrum of opportunities to gain exposure with your target audience if the thinking behind every marketing initiative is strategically sound and the content is creative. If you don't know how to do the marketing and advertising but you're still writing and publishing the book, then that's why it's good that you've just read about WhitakerSparks.
Keep thinking. Keep typing. Know that the money always follows the marketing.
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