Top Self Publishing Firms: How Writers Get Published, Sell More Books, And Rise To The Top: And Make Money Working From Home With The Best Print On Demand Self-Publishing Companies [Paperback]

Stacie Vander Pol (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 10, 2011

Stacie Vander Pol has done exhaustive research to uncover the self-publishing firms that sell more books, pay the highest royalties, and provide the best overall value for writers.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Top Self-Publishing Firms is the only book on the market that dares to rate each self-publishing company based on the sales performance of its books. This valuable resource profiles the twenty-six best firms, defined by sales results, and provides the information you need to choose a self-publisher, including:

¨Sales results, royalty payments, contract terms,

bookstore distribution, best-value publishing

packages, author purchase discounts, and

overall value ratings for the top companies.

¨Hundreds of top selling, self-published titles

and the firms behind them.

¨An easy to read reference chart that compares the

best firms head to head.

¨Tips for getting the best sales results on

Amazon.com.

About the Author

Stacie Vander Pol has a Masters degree in Business and fifteen years of sales and marketing experience. She has applied her business know-how to the world of publishing and shares it with you in Top Self Publishing Firms.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 166 pages
• Publisher: CreateSpace (January 10, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1440407541
• ISBN-13: 978-1440407543
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (48 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #516,989 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Resource, September 27, 2008

By 

John Chancellor "Mentor coach" (Spring Hill, TN) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Top Self Publishing Firms: How Writers Get Published, Sell More Books, And Rise To The Top: And Make Money Working From Home With The Best Print On Demand Self-Publishing Companies (Paperback)

If you are planning on publishing a book, Stacie had created an extremely valuable resource to save you time and money getting your book into print. She has also provided a number of tips to help make publishing your book a financial success.

If you have never seriously thought of publishing your own book, you should heed Stacie's advice. "Publishing a book can make you an authority in your field. Writing a book can increase your credibility, advance your career or pave the way for a new one." In a world where it is getting more and more difficult to set yourself apart, writing and publishing a book is an easy and surefire way to do that.

Stacie has done the research and complied a list of the top 26 self-publishing firms based on their sales results. It would take you an enormous amount of time just to find these 26 companies. But she not only list the companies, she ranks them by sales results, recommended publishing packages, Amazon results, bookstore royalties, distribution, author purchases and overall value.

The range in recommended publishing packages shows why this book is such a valuable resource. The recommended packages range from $0 cost to $22,400. And while you might think that the one that cost the most gives the most value, you would be wrong. But the one with the least expensive publishing package is no bargain either.

All the companies are listed on a comparison chart which makes it easy to compare the various strong points and weaknesses of each company. That chart alone would be worth the price of the book.

In addition, Stacie gives some great inside information about how the book publishing business works. Not understanding how the royalty percentage really works could lead you to picking the wrong company. The quoted royalty percentage is not the determining factor. You really need to understand what the royalty is a percentage of and how that number is calculated.

While the book is very short, there is a wealth of other information that you really need to understand if you are going to have a pleasant experience.

If you are serious about writing a book, buy and read this book. Stacie gives some great advice about editing, book cover, topic, titles. I have seen many books that had great content but failed to follow the advice of this book and as a result failed to achieve the results the author expected.

In choosing a company to publish your book, you need to be very honest about what you expect from the book. If you are like most self-published authors, the greatest value will come from the books you use in marketing your business. So pay very close attention to the price the company sells your book to you. On a $14.95 book, the range was from $2.65 to a high of $11.96. For most authors this should be a strong reason for selecting a company. Be sure to think the project through.

The section on Amazon is well worth the price of the entire book. You cannot afford to self-publish without knowing the way to work with Amazon.

If you are in a profession where publishing your own book makes sense, then you really can't afford to be without this resource. It is worth ten times the price in the time it will save you doing all the research yourself. And you will learn all about the process. I highly recommend it.

24 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Inside Story, October 10, 2008

By 

Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Top Self Publishing Firms: How Writers Get Published, Sell More Books, And Rise To The Top: And Make Money Working From Home With The Best Print On Demand Self-Publishing Companies (Paperback)

'Hard times, hard times, come again no more' is an old song that certainly applies to our current economic status in the country at present, but it could also be a frequently hummed tune by first time authors who are struggling to see their words in print. This very well written and designed help book by Stacie Vander Pol should be a welcome light at the end of that dark tunnel of publishing houses. In a very down to earth, practical, and well researched manner Vander Pol distills the information about the many Self Publishing houses available to writers frustrated with returned manuscripts from the major publishing firms and offers insider information and statistics on the strong points and weak points of each of these firms.

But before getting to the 'secrets' of the self publishing firms, Vander Pol offers thoughtful aids in approaching both fiction and nonfiction book subjects, adds a succinct 'glossary' on the ins and outs of publishing packages, and advises writers how to approach self publishing firms. Then comes the meat of the book: 'This book profiles the top twenty-six self publishing firms based on their sales results' (though there are a number of fine firms not mentioned here). And what follows this very informative section is advice on how to gain exposure, obtain reviews, act in a business-like fashion as a new writer, and very importantly, how to utilize the fact that Amazon has long been credited as providing sales pages for the works from self publishing houses.

Vander Pol's book is a solid resource for writers actively searching for avenues for publication, but it is also a fascinating book for students at the university level who are considering a writing career, and for those of us who receive the email requests for reviews of 'new works'. It is a pleasure to read and an important addition to the resource library of every beginning writer. Recommended. Grady Harp, October 08

44 of 53 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars No such thing as a "Self Publishing Company", August 17, 2009

By 

An Actual Reader - See all my reviews

This review is from: Top Self Publishing Firms: How Writers Get Published, Sell More Books, And Rise To The Top: And Make Money Working From Home With The Best Print On Demand Self-Publishing Companies (Paperback)

Big vanity publishers, like iUniverse and Author House, claim to be "self publishing companies" when they are not. What you need to know about self publishing is this:

1. Self publishing is a long and honorable tradition. But it is NOT the same thing as vanity publishing, despite the propaganda of the big "POD" vanity presses.

2. Self publishing means starting up your own publishing company and purchasing your own block of ISBNs for the purpose of publishing your own books.

3. If you do a good job of self publishing, and put a huge amount of work into it, you have a reasonable chance of cf commercial success. If you choose vanity publishing, you have no chance of commercial success.

By the way, I do think some of the vanity publishers provide a good service for those who want to create a book for families and friends. If you write a family history, Aunt Minnie's poems and recipes, for example, a vanity publisher may provide an inexpensive way to make it look like a book. That's fine--I have books like that from my own family, and they are valuable to me. The problem is that so many vanity POD publishers pretend to offer a possibility of commercial success, preying on the hopes and dreams of would-be authors.

If you want to sell more than 65 copies of a book, and if you want to sell to people other than friends and family, and if you want to sell beyond your own Web site or the back of the room where you speak, then there are two ways to go. You can actually self publish--which means learning all about the publishing business, just like you have to learn about any other business you hope to succeed at. Or, submit your book proposal to real publishers and real literary agents. Those are both difficult options. But anybody who offers an easier route to fame and fortune as an author is a huckster, pure and simple.

--Steve Carlson, president,Independent Publishers of New England