Customer Reviews

POD for Profit: More on the NEW Business of Self Publishing, or How to Publish Your Books With Online Book Marketing and Print on Demand by Lightning Source

5 star:		(36)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am fully aware Mr. Shepard's efforts and intent in publishing this book is to guide authors who desire to self-publish through the maze of using Lightning Source and all of the benefits of using LSI as your POD printer and distributor. I want to add that is book has lots of information about the BUSINESS of self-publishing.

I know when I first started down the path of self-publishing I wanted to make extra money for my small business, but I was overwhelmed with the process of getting the book into print. Several books later, I am learning, the hard way, that self-publishing is a business.

I really want to get my books in print, share information with the people who buy my books, but I also want my business to succeed financially. As my wife points out, it is not a hobby, it is a business. POD for Profit has made me look at a lot of things differently in terms of the business of self-publishing.

The book has also given me a better understanding of how to publish with Lightning Source. I currently use CreateSpace to self-publish and while I am pleased with CreateSpace, will use Lightning to publish a book in the future.

Even if, like me, you self-publish with CreateSpace and plan to continue doing so in the future, I strongly recommend this book for the information about the self-publishing industry and the publishing industry and how they operate as businesses. It will help you examine how you run your self-publishing company. I learned that for some of my books, it made more sense financially to use CreateSpace but for a future book I am working on, it will make more sense financially to publish it with Lightning Source.

Like Professor Shepard's other books on the field of self-publishing, POD for Profit is a must purchase book!

Aaron is a leader in the self-publishing industry, and he doesn't mince words. This book is different from "Aiming at Amazon" because it focuses primarily on the profitability of POD publishing. In that respect, the book is unusual and long overdue.

Aaron covers things that I've never seen other authors cover; for example:

1. He discusses licensing options through the CCC (a very smart idea and a great way to generate passive revenue).

2. Aaron gives great ideas about how to promote your book and get book reviews. I used many of the ideas from POD for Profit for my own review copies this year. For example, he says that the author print a template/sticker with all the pertinent book information and stick it on the inside cover for the reviewer. Letters and tear sheets get lost-- but the review sheet will be stuck inside that book forever-- encouraging your reviewer to leave the review every time they open the book. I've been sending out review copies for years-- why didn't I ever think of that?

3. Aaron talks primarily about LightningSource, but the information would be useful to anyone wanting to self-publish through CreateSpace or any other POD printer.

Lots of great info--Highly recommended.

I read Aaron Shepard's "Aiming At Amazon" and "Perfect Pages" two years ago before I published my first book. The first edition of "Aiming At Amazon" dealt with Amazon marketing and working with Lightning Source. The second edition deals mostly with Amazon marketing, and "POD for Profit" deals with working with Lightning Source.

If I had read this book before I started, I could've saved myself a lot of time and headache. I made several crucial errors with book design and Lighting Source's operations. I also could've saved some money. Every time you have to correct a file, you have to pay a revision fee.

This book, like "Aiming At Amazon," doesn't fill you with false hope either. The author doesn't promise you $10,000 per month like the claims of other books I've read. He shows that most publishers who work with Lightning Source earn between $100-$1000 per month. I believe that this is "encouragingly realistic." I, myself, have always earned at least $100 in one month and no more than $800.

The author provides a US Dollar to UK Pound conversion table (and other currencies). After I reviewed the table of conversions, I saw that I was underselling myself in Amazon UK. So I raised the UK price of my books to correspond with conversion table.

If you plan on self-publishing with Lightning Source, get this book along with "Perfect Pages" and "Aiming At Amazon."

Brandon Simpson

Aaron Shepard knows a lot about POD and Lightning Source and explains it well. I've worked with LSI for 2 years and I still learned some interesting pointers from this book. Like his other two books on related subjects, this book is very informative.

So, why only 4 stars (and could have been only 3)? Simply put, it's the cover. While one might say that a cover doesn't need to be anything special--text, name, get the idea across, and (with POD) make it stand out at Amazon--I disagree. Those of us who do POD books need to make a special effort to show we are not turning out inferior products, and that includes the area of graphic design.

As a foremost proponent and leader of POD books, Shepard's books are very visible. When they do not represent "best practices", it is a blemish for POD in general. This cover, with the enormous drawing of the author on the back--in the real copy--sadly, calls out "vanity press" in my opinion, even though it isn't.

To make a cover like this and then worry if LSI rasterizes it or not--and even to scrutinize the edges of the fonts through a loop to see if they are sharp when magnified--is, sorry to say, a baffling example of "forest for the trees", given the actual cover design elements we're talking about here.

Shepard is a leader in the POD field. His book should be an example of best practices--an example of how POD can favorably compare in quality (not just content) with mainstream publishers. So, in my opinion, this is a serious flaw of this book. Since he clearly has the technical skills to do something much better, and takes a pragmatic approach to his sales, it is all the more disappointing that he chooses this route, sacrificing real-life graphic design quality for (I'm assuming) a cover that he feels "brands" and/or "markets" better online.

Many others have already written four and five star reviews for Shepard's newest book "POD for Profit," but I could not resist.

All that I can say is that everything Shepard says is true. He and Morris Rosenthal are the trailblazers and gurus of using POD for self-publishing. If this is something you are interested in getting involved with, all of Shepard's and Rosenthal's books on the subject are required reading. Rosenthal's "Print On Demand Book Publishing" taught me the business model. Shepard's "Perfect Pages" taught me how to format my work. "POD for Profit," however, is the most detailed of them all, and shows you step-by-step how to get the book distributed as a self publisher.

If you think that this will be easy to do and won't require much effort, you're wrong, and you're better off paying another company to handle the technicalities for you. But, if you're willing to put in the work, Rosenthal and Shepard show you how to navigate the business of self publishing for the first time.

I feel a great debt to Shepard and Rosenthal for sharing their hard earned knowledge with the world. Aside from buying their books, this is a small way of saying "thanks!"

This is the manual you must buy if you want to get serious about publishing your own book. The "want" in that last sentence is purposely used to alert those who are currently only tempted, and are hoping to get serious. Shepard's work will give you the kick in the pants needed to get going. This is the manual you must buy if you need someone to hold your hand (figuratively) as you proceed along the path to accomplishment and recognition as an author and publisher. There are other books that parallel the contents of POD FOR PROFIT, but many others, as good as they are, address the task of self-publishing from the 30,000 foot level. Shephard stands next to you in the trenches. Deciding which source to spend your money on isn't an either-or decision. Those other books should be added to your reference library as well. However POD FOR PROFIT might be classified as the "cook-book" approach. That term is not meant to be pejorative. Shephard is extremely specific about the steps to be taken. He couldn't be more explicit without mentioning commands in the software (which he does in a few cases). This book provides detailed guidance in all of the areas listed under CONTENTS on Amazon's page. If this is your first acquisition of one of Shephard's excellent treatises on self-publishing, you will encounter, as you proceed down the road, questions about your book's appearance and finding your readers. The answers are waiting for you in Shephard's other two books of his trilogy: PERFECT PAGES and AIMING AT AMAZON.

Don't judge this book by its cover. This detailed how-to manual walks authors through the process of working profitably with Lightning Source. You'll get tips for setting up your publishing company; technical advice on preparing your files for printing; details on getting your book listed in important databases and online bookstores; advice on setting the list price, wholesale discount, and returns policy for your book; and much more. This book also offers insight into how the publishing industry works and tips and resources for authors outside the United States.

With its clear instructions, examples, resources, and practical advice, POD for Profit is a must-have for any author who wants to profit from independent on-demand publishing.

--Dana Lynn Smith, book marketing coach and author of The Savvy Book Marketer Guides

I appreciated the amount of detail about Lightning Source in this book, because god knows it's hard to come by from Lightning Source itself. I was particularly glad to learn the tips about how to avoid having covers rasterize, because have a solid cover is really important and rasterization can destroy it. That being said, I think some of the author's advice are just untested assumptions. I don't agree, for example, with the notion that you should create square images to use as art on sites like Amazon. I do think you need to keep in mind the small size, but when I first came across this book I first assumed that it was an audio CD, because we're used to seeing square art for CDs, rectangle art for the vast majority of books. I don't think that graphic design is his strength, judging from the the cover of his books and the layout of the blocks, but when he sticks to what he knows, the information is extremely valuable. I recommend.

I read this carefully hoping for more information on how to make my publishing company more successful. Aiming At Amazon was essential for getting our books into print, but this, which seems to be something of an updating of that book, is something of a disappointment. There are a few new tips that are useful, but the sticking point for all of us is the question of marketing, which is treated cavalierly in this book. Shepard essentially says that blogging and twittering and all the other recommendations of the marketing gurus is time wasted -- authors think they are doing something, but they are doing little. He may be right, of course, but he has little to say to help us market our titles. This is especially true for those of us publishing fiction and memoirs.

The advent of desktop computer word processing software meant that anyone who could type could create a manuscript for whatever their version of 'The Great American Novel' or non-fiction block buster might be. Next came converting that manuscript into a published book -- long the nearly exclusive province of traditional publishers, technological progress in the form of 'publish on demand' or 'POD' publishers came into existence to meet the demand of self-publishing authors who lacked the expertise to accomplish this task but who could simply write a check to someone who could. The trick was how to make a financial profit on that capital investment. "POD for Profit" is clearly written and very nicely organized instructional guide from Aaron Shepard wherein he uses his own experience and expertise in the field to help others learn how to print and publish their own material through print on demand organizations, and not only get their material out there, but prove it to be a profitable move. "POD for Profit" is a choice and very highly recommended read for anyone considering printing on demand as their publishing option.