JollyToad.com

Adventures in Successful Self-publishing

I’ve always considered myself a writer. Getting others to acknowledge that fact took me a long time! Just kidding! I’ve always had great feedback on my writing ever since my school days. I wrote professionally as part of my job during the years I worked as a naturalist and communicator with the National Parks Service in Canada (Parks Canada). I wrote regular articles for government publications, newspapers, and even the occasional magazine. In fact, a large part of every job I’ve ever done has involved writing and I’ve always loved it.

My interest in money

During the 80’s I became interested in living a life of personal freedom – which is what having money is all about -- and became fascinated with commodity trading. I ran across a book offering inside advice on investing by Swiss bankers and it described how you could make a fortune buying and selling Treasury Bill futures during times of rapid inflation. This piqued my interest so I decided to look into it further. Fortunately, the first book I picked up on commodity trading was by Bruce Gould and it was the best introduction I could have asked for. Clear, simple and powerful. (I’ve since written the book I wish I’d had when I started.) Well, I soon realized there was a lot more to this whole game than the first book had pointed out. In fact, I realized that the first book was positively DANGEROUS because there was so much leverage involved with trading commodities that you could just as easily LOSE a fortune as make one (much MORE easily, in fact!).

I was living in the Canadian Rockies in a small town called Invermere (south-east corner of British Columbia). Gorgeous town on the shores of Lake Windermere, Panorama ski hill about 25 minutes drive away, Rockies at our door step… it was a recreational paradise! A great place to live and work. And it became even better when I figured out how to trade the futures markets in New York or Chicago by placing a phone call to my broker in Calgary. I started to trade on paper (no cash), as Bruce Gould had advised, and made a small fortune! Then I put some cash on the line and lost money on my first trade. Discouraging! But -- to make a long story short (I’m writing-up THAT story for people interested in my book How to Make Money Trading Stocks & Commodities) I did make money, and pretty soon I was spending a lot of time telling people how I did it. Soon I was doing evening courses and I decided it was time to write a book.

Origins of my book

I’d always wanted to write a book. After a great deal of study, I realized there were three overall subject areas in the “How-to” market that sold the most books:

How to make money,
How to make love and
How to get healthy.

Hey, I had experience in at least one of those subjects! So I decided to write a book about a successful strategy I’d developed for making money on the markets. No I DIDN’T call it “How to Make a Fortune…” because I hadn’t made one myself. But I was making the equivalent of a half-time job by spending about half an hour a day.

So we decided to move to Victoria where my wife, Jan, could get her Master’s in Counselling Psychology and I could concentrate on writing my book.

I’d been working on the book – sort of – for about 10 months before we moved. But once I had the time to devote to it, things really seemed to take off. Before then I was telling people I was writing a book but somehow it didn’t really feel like it. Once I committed to seeing the book in print, however, things changed. THEN I knew I was writing a book! Subtle difference, but a big change in attitude AND in results! Go ahead, ask yourself if you’re writing a book. You’ll know the truth, and its only when you can honestly say “Yes!” that you’ll have the motivation to stick to it and see it in print.

Taking the self-publishing route

Early on I’d decided to self-publish my book. I knew I had a tightly focused product that would appeal to a market that I could reach through advertising in the right magazines and, besides, I couldn’t be bothered with the submission-rejection routine. After all this wasn’t a piece of fiction; it was more of a tool that would sell itself to the right people. I probably would have done things a whole lot differently if I’d had a more general manuscript and definitely would have with a piece of fiction.

Its important to note that I had a marketing strategy BEFORE I sent my book to the printer. The rest was relatively easy by comparison. I wrote the book, had a friend of mine with some expertise in the area read it and make suggestions (he told me afterwards he was surprised how good it was! Hey, did he think I’d write a bad book!). Then I had it desktop published. (This was in the late 80’s when the programs were so complicated that I was happy to pay someone else to do it. Nowadays I do it all myself.).

Call me Mr. Publisher

So, in order to self-publish I became a publisher… called myself Quantum Communications (still the name of my business), registered for the ISBN numbers, read everything I could get my hands on, subscribed to newsletters on marketing books and self-publishing, etc, etc. One big, big help was to get my own copy of The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing by Tom and Marilyn Ross. Excellent book! I joined the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia and stayed in touch with what was happening in the world of publishing. Lots to learn and stay on top of. I had lots of fun and enjoyed my life as a publisher. I also published a book by my wife (The Joy of Becoming Your Own Counsellor by Jan Cadieux).

I had 2,000 copies of my book professionally printed and perfect bound by one of the best book printers in Canada at the time (Friesen Printers in Manitoba). I prepared the camera ready paste-up exactly as they specified. This was a big job because my book has dozens of charts in it and I had to paste the PMT (photo-mechanical transfers) for each chart in place by hand. (Hard to believe this was only 12 years ago!)

Before sending the camera ready to the printers I had 50 copies photocopied and spiral bound. These were my pre-press books. I used them to send out to reviewers and also to fulfill early orders. One of the best tricks I’d read about was to place ads in magazines BEFORE my book was even printed to see if there was a market! So I already had ads running in Futures Magazine (USA Today, Globe & Mail came later).

My book started to sell from day one of the ads in Futures Magazine. I had to run back a couple of times for more coil-bound books to fulfil the orders. The day my 2,000 books were delivered to my doorstep I felt like I was a proud parent all over again! It was exciting – seeing my own perfect-bound book hot-off-the-press!

I sent my book out to some commercial distributors and received a positive response from Gordon Soules Book Publishers. They agreed to market and distribute my book across Canada. Soon my book was on the shelves of most major bookstores across the country. Gordon also arranged for me to go to Toronto on a book tour organized by his publicist. So I flew to Toronto and had interviews on four radio stations, including a national network. It was a great feeling to walk into what is called the World’s Biggest Bookstore in Toronto to find myself looking at a bunch of my books (in keeping with author’s tradition, I did a little rearranging so the cover was showing rather than the spine).

Call me Mr. Contributing Editor

After a couple of months things really started to pick up. I was asked to become a contributing editor to a national Canadian financial magazine – the Canadian MoneySaver published by Dale Ennis. I wrote a regular column titled “The Intelligent Investor.” In return Dale sold my book in the back of his magazine and also published a couple of special reports that I wrote (you can see one here). This approach paid off well and the MoneySaver sold a lot of my books and reports.

Less than 18 months later I was nearly out of books – almost 2,000 sold. What to do next? Go the self-publishing route again on a second edition… or see if I could interest a publisher? By then I realized that I enjoyed the writing and promotion more than fulfilling the orders and keeping the accounts. I decided I didn’t really want to be a publisher as much as I wanted to be an author. So I decided to send my book to a few agents and publishers.

Well, within a week I had a positive response from an agent in Toronto and within a few days she phoned me to confirm that McGraw-Hill Ryerson was interested in publishing the second edition of my book. After a bit of negotiation on my behalf she sent me a contract. Once it was signed I received a $4,000 advance on royalties. McGraw-Hill designed a new cover, but basically what was between the covers was exactly the same as what I’d originally had desktop published, including the PMTs I’d pasted-up myself. Not bad for a first effort in book publishing, I’ve always figured! (In fact, don’t let them know, but I always thought MY cover was catchier than the one they had professionally designed! What do you think?)

In 1990 the McGraw-Hill edition rolled off the presses. Over the ensuing eight years McGraw-Hill sold a few more thousand copies and it was always a treat to walk into a bookstore somewhere in Canada knowing there was a good chance I’d find my book sitting on the shelves.

Becoming a published author opened a lot of doors for me. I became the editor and publisher of my own financial newsletter. My articles were regularly accepted for publication in several magazines and newspapers throughout Canada. For fun I even taught a part-time writing course at Camosun College.

Enter A Whole New Era: Electronic Publishing!

The saga continues! After my book was declared out-of-print in 1998 I thought, “well, that was a pretty good run – about 5,000 sold” and didn’t think much more about it. My wife and I spent the winter in Australia (that’s another book!) and when I returned to Victoria in the spring I started to do some research on the internet. For one thing, I wanted to see if there were any possibilities in the area of electronic publishing. That’s when I became really excited about the opportunities and possibilities that I uncovered!

Before I get into that, however, its time for a bit of personal reflection. I haven’t been actively trading for a few years now so I’ve felt out of touch with what’s happening in the markets. In a way I haven’t really felt comfortable about putting a lot of energy into marketing my book for the last few years. I’ve been sorting out my own role in the big scheme of things regarding global speculation, the role of the markets, the gap between the rich and the poor, etc., etc. So, I haven’t actively promoted my book since the early years when I self-published it myself.

I’ve come to the conclusion that there is a role for the tools I present in my book. Its better to be in the markets with an awareness of how they work and how to profit from them. I’m convinced the tools per se are not bad, its how we implement them that can be either good or bad, positive or negative. In fact, mutual fund managers and their ilk are often the ones creating the greatest harm by pushing companies (on our behalf, I might add) to do whatever it takes to make higher profits. Return on Investment (ROI) becomes the name of the game and if it takes laying-off thousands of workers or moving to a country with fewer social or environmental regulations, so be it. But remember, they are merely taking the money we put into their funds based on their past record to make more money. We rarely ask questions about which companies they are investing our money in. And what they’re pressuring those companies to do in the name of profit. So, in the end, I think we’re all better off if more of people use their money wisely and choose to invest in companies that can bear closer scrutiny. After all, do you REALLY want to invest in a tobacco manufacturer when you know that the kids who become hooked today will be dying premature deaths a few decades down the road?

Well, in the end I decided to have my book re-published, along with some of these thoughts in a preface to the new edition. I was particularly impressed with the out-of-print program offered by my new publisher, toExcel. I think we’ve entered a whole new phase in the world of publishing. First there was the stone on slate, then the quill, then the printing press and now the electronic press! Hold onto your hats, folks, because it’s going to be quite a ride for writers and others who want to communicate with the masses, or to simply tell their story.

ToExcel will take an out-of-print book and republish it under their imprint with a new ISBN number and make it available both electronically and in hard-copy format. This is going to revolutionize the world of books and writing. There’s really no such thing as an “out-of-print” book. There’s no charge for the initial set-up ToExcel does charge if the book has never been published before ($100 at the time of writing this) and for designing a cover, etc. The royalties are 50% for electronic format and 20% for hardcopy. Pretty good in an industry where a royalty of 10-12% is the norm.

My book will be coming out (for the 3^rd time) in the fall of 1999. It will be available over the Internet at all the major outlets; Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Chapters, etc.

Is this any different between this and a vanity press? In my mind there is… a vanity press normally charges a sizeable chunk of change -- hundreds of dollars -- to publish your book. They will also get you to sign a contract specifying the minimum number of book that YOU guarantee to purchase! The only money being made on that kind of deal is normally in the pockets of the vanity press.

What I’ve Learned

I’ve learned a whole bunch of things during the different phases of this successful adventure in self-publishing and beyond:

I don’t think I could have interested an agent as well as a publisher nearly as easily without having previously sold almost 2,000 copies in less than 18 months. So, self-publishing a quality book was perhaps the first key to my eventual success as a published author.

I now realize that you CREATE your own authority. I once thought that you had to BE an authority before you could write a book. Now I know it’s the other way round! You write the book first and THAT brings you recognition as an author-ity. (It does help to know what your writing about, of course, but you can always learn what you need to know). Look at well-known authorities in almost any field (other than a few well-known sports or business superstars) and I’ll wager they’ve written at least one book – and that’s usually what made them well-known.

The world of publishing and writing is about to be turned upside down. Bookstores will become more like printers and printing agents. If you want a hard copy you’ll search for a book and browse through it electronically, either in the bookstore or from home, and then charge it to your credit card. The bookstore will have 2-3 copies for browsing only. Once you’ve paid, the book will be downloaded to the nearest bookstore/printer and your copy will be printed on-demand as you wait. It will be ready in about 10 minutes. If you order from home the book will be couriered to you that same day.
If you want an electronic copy, of course, its even simpler… and we’re already there. You just pay for it with your card and download it directly off the net.

This puts electronic publishing firmly in the realm of self-publishing and promises to make life a lot EASIER for the self-publisher. Only one or two books? No problem, you can still get listed on Amazon or Barnes & Noble. No more fulfillment hassles, you let people download directly off your site or from the bookstore. This is going to revolutionize the business!