Find Your Inner Tom Peters

A self-published book can give you a marketing platform.

Cynthia McKay had no intention of becoming a business author. She had no burning desire to see her name on the bestseller lists or to make the rounds of business news shows. She did, however, want to take her company, Le Gourmet Gift Basket, to the next level.

Almost as soon as McKay started the Castle Rock, Col.-based company in 1992, she began receiving dozens of calls a week from would-be entrepreneurs who were interested in launching similar businesses. That convinced her she could turn her company into a franchise and decided to write a book about the gift-basket industry that would serve as a manual and help recruit franchisees.

McKay figured that all those phone calls proved there was a market for such a book, but she was realistic—she knew no traditional publisher would take the gamble. So McKay chose to self-publish, spending about $5,000 to write and produce The Business of Gift Baskets: A Guide for Survival. The number of franchises has increased about 30% since the book came out in 1998 and now McKay has more than 510 franchisees and 28 employees.

Most small-business-owners-turned-authors don’t write books expecting to make a lot from sales of their books: Like McKay, they’re after the added business those tomes can generate. A book, even if it’s self-published, can make you an instant authority in your field, giving you immediate credibility and helping you differentiate yourself from competitors. “It’s the ultimate business card,” says John Fox, a marketing expert with Venture Marketing in Naperville, Ill. Fox’s firm works with small-to-medium sized businesses, and is himself a self-published book author of Marketing Playbook (Eagle Cross Publishing, 2005).

Like McKay, Marc Joseph got the idea about writing a book when he started getting calls from people who sought his expertise. Joseph is CEO of Dollar Days, a 10-employee Scottsdale, Ariz., Internet company that sells discount items to small businesses. Small business owners sought him out for one important reason: He had figured out ways that small retailers can survive in a Wal-Mart world. “We were getting around 300 phone calls a month from people wanting advice about how to open a business,” he says. So, he wrote Secrets of Retailing: How to Beat Wal-Mart (Silverback Books, 2005). He spent $20,000 on a first run of 8,000 copies. “If I took out an ad in a major magazine it would cost me the same amount,” says Joseph.

If your book clicks—and you’re smart about promotion—you may actually make a little money. With a publishing company, the author usually gets 6 percent to 8 percent of the list price for each copy sold. A self-published work generates a 20% to 50% profit, according to Fox. If a book retails for $19.95 on Amazon, the site will probably pay about $9 per copy and the self-published author will net around $5, says Fox. If you sell the book off your own website, you might make as much as $15 per copy, he adds. (While Amazon is expensive, it is a convenient way to get your book into the hands of readers; if you sell off your own website, you have to be set up to handle credit-card transactions and fulfillment.)

Self-publishing has another big advantage for novice business authors--speed. For the business owner who’s eager to find new customers now, the turnaround on conventional publishing—18 months from accepted manuscript to delivery to stores—is counter-productive. A self-published book, on the other hand, can take as little as two months, once the manuscript is ready.

Equally important, self-publishing gives you greater control. With a conventional publisher, you give up your rights to the work completely. The publisher takes control of the editing, packaging and marketing (and most business books receive little promotion). With a self-published book, of course, you don’t.

Still, self-publishing is a big undertaking. By definition, it means you’re on your own—and you have to take care of a wide range of tasks that, under ordinary circumstances, your publisher would oversee. To be successful requires the following steps:

• Don’t skimp on preliminary market research. Professional authors first write a proposal outlining the concept, market, and competition. It’s a time-consuming exercise, but it helps the self-published author to fine-tune the idea and determine the real potential before you dig in. Visit a few major bookstores—the best ones for business books are downtown in major cities. Write down everything from book titles and retail prices to the number of pages. Then spend some time on Amazon.com, where you can browse 263,898 titles—all with sales rankings and many with reader reviews You can also call a large wholesaler like Ingram Book Group to find out how many similar books are in stock and the weekly sales.
  
• Seek professional help. Chances are, you’re not a skilled writer, editor or designer. But, if you want your book to boost your reputation, it needs to be a high-quality product. Otherwise, “You can actually damage your reputation,” warns Fox. That means, at a minimum, hiring an editor, as well as a designer for both the cover, and inside art and layout. (Expect to pay a minimum of $40 an hour). If you do your own marketing –publishing brochures, running websites or publishing newsletters—you may have some resources in house. Joseph did, which saved him on writing, design and editing.
  
• Outsource. Custom publishing houses, like the Jenkins Group in Travers City, Mich, will do anything from help you write the book to printing and binding. That soup-to-nuts service can cost as much as $30,000 for an initial print run of 5,000. There are also print-on-demand Internet services, such as iUniverse.com and Xlibris.com, which will charge anywhere from $299 to $1,600 to produce a book. They will also pay royalties on what they sell, but you must first buy a specified number of discounted copies. Another possibility is Morgan James, a hybrid outfit that acts as a regular publisher—you don’t pay them--but also allows authors to maintain complete ownership of all material. In addition, it pays larger than usual royalties—about 20% compared to the industry average of 4%, according to David Hancock, CEO of the Garden City, N.Y., company—as opposed to an upfront advance.
  
• Marketing. Plan a promotional and distribution campaign. Producing a book is only half the battle. This is where a little entrepreneurial spirit helps. “Most bookstores won’t touch a self-published author,” says John Hollingsworth, a business consultant for GlennDietzel.com in Ontario, Canada. That means you’ll have to try other avenues. Your best bet is to advertise and sell your book on your company Web site. It’s also a good idea to start a related blog. At the same time, be prepared to give away many copies for free at everything from speaking engagements to trade association meetings. Luis Mago, CEO of Network 4 Leaders, a 120-person Boca Raton-based strategic planning consulting firm recently published Strategy: The Art of Mastering Strategy to Improve Business Performance While Maximizing Growth and Value (Think-co Inc., 2005). He gave away 65 copies to the board of directors and other influential members of the local Chamber of Commerce and mailed 50 to C-level executives whom he thought were likely targets. Since the book was published in May, according to Mago, the time it takes to close a deal has dropped from four months to less than 30 days. “Our goal is not to be the number one best-selling book in America,” he says. ”Our book is to be used as a marketing tool.”