Self-Publishing Part 2: Printing Press Basics

Printing presses have a long history of rebellion. From distributing contraband to book burnings, the written — and printed — word has the power to incite change and enact power struggles, causing a transfer of ideas that form new belief systems for entire societies. Today is no different, but the power struggle seems to be within the industry itself. The many ways self-publishers are told to stay in line is waiting for a rebellion to happen. From fonts to industry standards to how it’s all produced feels the opposite of self-actualized power. I don’t mean to wax philosophical about something as basic as putting words on a piece of paper, but it feels like an encroachment on my right to be free to write, edit, and do what I want with my creative endeavor. I wonder if Gutenberg charged for the use of his press or if William Morris represented the industry standard of his day.

Print Formatting and Editing

Print books don’t have the formatting issues that ebooks do, but they do require you to navigate a process. Some of it is easy, with tutorials to help you, including guidance on setting up the cover based on the number of pages in your book to ensure the spine has the right depth. They also offer AI-type book formatting for the interior and resources to work with real people. The push from the industry is to hire a designer for the cover and the interior. Hiring an editor is pushed hard. I used AI to edit my book, allowing me full control over word choice. It wasn’t perfect, but it let me see my mistakes and helped me take an active role in my own editing process. Hiring an editor puts my book in someone else’s hands, which remained a sticking point for me. As I stated in part one, every time I asked for help on this process, it broke down. Both the interior and cover are my own design.

File Types and Printing

The preferred file type for printing is pdf, which I'm sure most people know is an image file. Converting to a pdf is not a big deal, but the printer requested a specific ‘high quality’ pdf for both the cover and the interior of the book. The cover template came from the printer themselves in the industry standard InDesign file (Adobe software program), so it’s not clear why they didn’t ask for that file back and instead relied on me to export to pdf. They also made a big to-do over the font I used saying that the RGB color was off and some other technical jargon. I could be wrong about something I don’t know about, but I have sent many pdf files in 24”x 36” size construction drawings to the printer where the lines have to be exact, and I never had an issue with RGB or other supposedly embedded fonts… because it’s a pdf. In the end, the print came out just fine.

ISBNs and other numbers

ISBN is a unique identifier that book sellers, libraries, and others use to catalog books. Self-publishers pay for it themselves in most countries, but if you are willing to keep your book with one distributor, they will give you one for ‘free.’ I have no idea how the system is arranged, how they give you one number over the other, if anyone keeps track of it all in some large database, or if there is one entity, like the Wizard of Oz, holding sway over who gets what number. But, if you are willing to pay, you can have one of your very own. Oh, and you have to buy one for every format of your book. I think a simple “E” or other identifier would work. But with enough information, you can sidestep all of that. Where is the information? Who knows. It’s nowhere and everywhere. People post many things, but there is no definitive source, and much of it is outdated.

Barcodes are bought and sold as well, another plot twist for anyone who isn’t paying attention. A barcode is about data tracking and nothing more. It allows the retailer to know how many SKUs of one item are being sold, which helps with inventory and purchasing. This is a retail function, not the function of the author/ creator. Shouldn’t the retailer be responsible for their own bar code? The answer is yes, and to sell one seems like a shady practice to me, one that is more opaque rather than being open and willing to share information. Why would an author buy a bar code when it’s up to the retailer to sell the book, proving their worth for taking such a large percentage of the sale?

In my previous post about self-publishing, I covered a bit about what publishing an ebook is like. Among other things, I talked about pricing being the wild, wild West of the e-trade market or gig economy. But that is just a small portion of the deep cuts authors experience in their creative endeavor at the end of a long process that can take many months or years. After all the agonizing over word choice, plot points for some, research for others, the ‘industry standard’ is to take 55% off the cover price, which doesn’t include the printing cost. The pricing selected by the author, or owner of the work, is set and then each retailer takes their cut as well as the company who distributes to those retailers, with Amazon taking the deepest cut. It’s nebulous how they come up with this standard. Because of this and my personal opinion, I chose not to post my book on Amazon’s marketplace. And, while first going with the ‘standard discount,’ I eventually changed it because the cut was too much.

Marketing and ‘branding’

Filling out and understanding the meta-data and other paperwork to get your book published requires the flair and panache of a marketing guru. You have to take into consideration who will be reading your book. (How should I know?) You have to believe that the choices you’re making for how your book will be set up are correct. (Is this a self-help book, mindfulness, or psychology?) And you have to know without a shadow of a doubt that you are on to something when you don’t find the topic you’ve written about in the drop-down box provided.

It seems like we have control over the process, but we really don’t. We’re shuttled through the system, making our marks, signing on the dotted line, and then we are forced to put our names out there like we’re products sitting on a shelf, making the author a ‘brand.” I have a lot of opinions about branding, and making people brands is one of them. People are not brands! We’re people! As a self-publisher, you have to use your name, even if you’re uncomfortable with it. So if the distributor is forcing us to publish under our name, then they are buying and selling our names, which feels icky. It gives them power over our rights as sovereign individuals who have the freedom to be who we are and that includes setting our divine life force energy point at a price higher than the one they’ve dictated.

Of course, this was my first time doing this and I was flying blind, but I feel like the process is purposely opaque while companies tout their ability to make it easy. The ‘standards’ of the industry don’t make it fair for people who are trying to make a living doing their own thing. While the companies that provide a service are fair in taking something, the deep ‘discount’ on someone else’s creative endeavor, or divine life force energy, is extreme. So will I be doing this again? Not sure. I have a few more book ideas percolating, but I’m not sure about the publishing process. Of course I know what to expect now so maybe it won’t be so bad, but I’m not sure I want to contribute to an industry that doesn’t put people’s rights, wants and desires first. I may have to find my own work around, which is percolating as well. We’ll see, but all rights are reserved by me because I am sovereign, independent, and free — just like every one of us on the road to discovering who we are.