The State Of Self-Publishing

In various recent podcast interviews, BookBaby’s Steven Spatz delivers insights into the current state of self-publishing, and what lies ahead.

BookBaby President Emeritus Steven Spatz spent time hitting the podcast circuit talking about various topics related to self-publishing: from what motivates authors to create, to old-school vanity presses and what “hybrid” publishing means, here are some excerpts from podcast interviews.

Eyedentity Talk with Janna Lopez

Steve Spatz — BookBaby, Self-Publishing & Beauty of Authentic Stories
Eyedentity Talk with Janna Lopez delivers engaging straight-talk with guests from all walks of life. Discover insights about Eyedentity from leaders, luminaries, and everyday people.

Janna Lopez: Once I knew I was going to self-publish, I felt complete freedom in my writing, all the clouds and expectation and darkness lifted and I realized, “I can say what I want, I can make the chapters how I want, I can write what I want.” It was a huge revelation for me to recognize that, whatever I had to express at that time, I was free to do. That shifted my writing life.

Steven Spatz: When we talk to people about self-publishing versus traditional publishing, a lot gets mentioned about timing and money, but one of the most overlooked things is creative control — for better or worse. Some people don’t want to be the contractor of their own house project, per se. But most people relish that this is their project. It’s their baby. If they want to have capital letters on the last line of every chapter, they can do that. If they want to only use even numbers for their chapters, they can do that. We provide advice and guidance, but at the end of the day, it’s completely, one hundred percent, controlled by the author. And that’s the cornerstone of the partnership we make with our authors: it’s your book, we’re just here to help.

Janna Lopez: From a marketing/commercial standpoint, you do have choices with how your money and time are spent, but I think writers struggle so deeply and profoundly with getting ideas on the page and having it be “forever.” There are enough obstacles as it is for a writer. The shift for me was profound, and it had nothing to do with the end result and what would become of the book. It was about me realizing that I am in a place where I can express and say what I want to say, and that meant a lot to me. Whether people were going to receive it or if I was going to make money or if this would be a commercial commodity became inconsequential and it shifted my way of looking at writing as conversation and expression and freedom.

Steven Spatz: You know, in the time that you and I have been having this conversation, we’ve probably talked to two dozen BookBaby authors on the phone, and each one of those authors has a very different reason for writing their book. One wants to publish the great American novel, one wants to do a memoir, one wants to do a family project, the distribution is going to be 50 people in their family. People come to us with all different kinds of projects, and that’s one of the fascinating things about what we do. When I get a chance to go into the shop and look at some of the titles rolling off the presses, it’s an amazing combination. Just the explosion of creativity that we’re able to help bring into the marketplace.

Listen to the entire podcast:

Novelist Spotlight [Mike Consol]

Episode 36: Steven Spatz discussing the self-publishing business in present and future tense
Hosted by Mike Consol, lifelong journalist and author of four novels, Novelist Spotlight is a gathering place for people interested in reading and writing great fiction and literature.

Mike Consol: I remember the old vanity presses. You’d send them a manuscript, they’d print it, they’d send you a box of 100 or 250 books, and then what do you do? You didn’t even have room in your house for it. You’d be stuck with all these books and you wouldn’t know what to do. Now, this was pre-Internet, pre-social media, pre-marketing channels — at least the kinds we have today. When you think back to what the old vanity presses were and what self-publishing is today — can you characterize what was and what is?

Steven Spatz: I’m happy to say the difference is night and day. Vanity publishing — that’s what their job was, to appeal to your vanity. Perhaps you were getting rejection letters from agents and publishers for years and you said, “By golly, I’m going to print a book to show off to my clients, my friends, my ex-wife…” And you’d pay an exorbitant amount of money, and they’d print your books — maybe hardcover maybe softcover — and it was a very unsatisfactory, even unsavory, situation. You were dealing with companies who didn’t care about you as an author, they just wanted to fill up a printing press, and authors just had no other outlet to getting their work to the marketplace.

I think there are two important milestones that changed the scope of the self-publishing world — besides the Internet and the explosion of marketing channels. Number one was the Kindle. Let’s face it, the Kindle made a lot of things possible. Digital books, for one, but it opened up the opportunity for people to say, “I don’t need an agent, I don’t need a publisher. I can go direct through Amazon.” Amazon deserves a lot of credit for opening the doors and allowing a lot of people into the marketplace through the brand-new world of eBooks.

The second milestone, which I think is just as important, is print-on-demand technology. Going back to the vanity presses, they had to run 1,000 books just to be profitable on the huge offset presses, those massive pieces of iron machinery. Now, you can come to BookBaby and say, “I want exactly one book.” And the miracle of digital printing allows us to print, cut, bind, and ship you one book — hardcover or softcover — with exactly the same quality as if you were going to print 1,000 books. No longer is self-publishing the consolation prize. Now you can make more money by self-publishing, you can control all your content, and there isn’t a whole lot that traditional publishing is offering you anyway. So self-publishing has emerged from this gray, dark underworld of the vanity press to now being a viable way to come to the marketplace.

Listen to the entire podcast:

Journey Sixty6 [Melissa Parks & Dave Goetz]

BookBaby President Steven Spatz on the Power of Self-Publishing Your Book
Journey Sixty6 is a podcast for aspiring writers — an A-to-Z guide to writing, publishing, and promoting your article, book, or writing project — featuring Melissa Parks and Dave Goetz as your road-trip advisors.

Melissa Parks: Can you help us understand the difference between self-publishing and hybrid publishing?

Steven Spatz: It’s funny, I was talking to someone just the other day and they had a much different idea of what “hybrid” publishing is than I do. So, here’s how I see it. Let’s say you’re a prolific writer, and you write over many different genres. You’re established with a traditional publisher publishing historical fiction, for instance, but your side project is writing romance (which you probably do under a pen name), and you want to try something different. So, while the traditional publishers publish their historical fiction titles, these authors bring their romance titles to a company like BookBaby and to self-publish.

They like the control of doing it themselves, and maybe they don’t want to have the constraints of the traditional author’s contract, or perhaps they just want to try this thing called self-publishing they’ve heard so much about. So we have thousands of authors who work with us who have a great track record and continuing relationship with a traditional publisher, and we work with them on other projects.

Or we have have authors who do their textbooks with a traditional publisher but bring their workbooks to BookBaby — or their companion pieces. And it’s part of this great use of content. Some of our most successful authors will have a book, and then they develop it into a textbook, and then they develop it into a speaker’s series, and they develop workbooks from that. And then it’s a web platform. The book is in the middle, and then there are other products orbiting around it. Hybrid publishing can be for someone who is looking for additional ways to take product into the marketplace. But if you ask ten authors, each will probably have a slightly different definition of what “hybrid” means.

Listen to the entire podcast: