Lightning Source: How to Self Publish a Book

[hinata167]

so is this pro or anti self publishing



[ErvHarmon]

Very informative. I especially appreciate this as My friend is experiencing the same experieces as you have . Thank you for making this video.

[MrFrozenCanuck]

I'm in the process of starting my own publishing company and using Lightning Source.

All the POD companies out there do nothing to sell books, they make their money by charging authors fees. If you order copies from a POD company for yourself, they will buy them from lightning and add fees on for you to pay them.

[cynergistics]

Excellent information - how do we contact your book editor/packager?

Lots of additional online marketing techniques could be used to market books as well including Google Adwords (Pay-per-click ads), blogging, social networking sites (Myspace, Facebook, Twitter), optimized website content - related information that would attract your target audience, etc...

Thanks for the video.

Jeff

[ParanormalIndiana]

Lightning Source is nice, but there prices are way to high, even yet. That is one thing that prevents self published books from getting into market place.

At $7.30 cost per book. and with the mandatory 55% retailer discount, you would have to set the cover price at around $20.00 just to break even on the printing cost and retailer discount. No respectable Paperback book has a cover price of $20, and very few stores will carry such a book with that high of price, because they don't sell.

(con)

[ParanormalIndiana]

If you want to print a book with any chance to get into stores, and actually sell copies, you have to print on an offset press. This of course means you have to order 1,000+ copies at a time, but you then get each paperback book for $1.80 cost and a hard back for $4.20 or so. The higher Qty, the cheaper the books. 10,000 paperbacks are only $0.71 each, which is how real publishers make money, they don't pay $7.00 per book, they pay under a dollar.

[theshawfam]

@ParanormalIndiana

i totally agree! i was wondering though if someone were to order 1,000+ copies from an offset printer, how would they get listed or sell to brick and mortar stores nationwide? besides the usual blogging, networking? i have some childrens books im ready to self-publish and was thinking of using Lightning Source for the advantage mainly of the distribution... but now i'm not so sure. any tips or ideas so i don't have 1,000 books sitting in our garage? help! thanks :)

[ParanormalIndiana]

@theshawfam

Sorry for the long time in replying. You don't need to use Lightning Source - you can get your own books listed in the Ingram catalog and on amazon.com. Once listed in Ingram, that is where a great deal of retailers buy from. It won't have you sell to them - but neither will lightning source - they simply list your book in the catalog. You'll still need to create press and an audience for your book in order for any retailer to carry it.

[GothEmoVampyreFreak]

great video. there is very good information.

[VendettaMan]

Very informative. Never heard of Lightning Source but it sounds reliable. Always heard that Authorhouse was a 'spit & polish' place when it came to developing books closely with their authors. Great video! Hope to see more.