On Demand Publishing – 3 Important Considerations

Today any writer can get their work into print using on demand publishing. And here’s the cool thing: The books look good. In fact, when they are designed and edited correctly, I’d bet you couldn’t tell any difference between an on demand published book and a book published by a traditional trade publisher. Fact is, on demand publishing is a self publishing author’s dream. Be that as it may, there are some important things you’ll want to consider before endeavoring to publish your book with on demand technology (otherwise known as print on demand).

Consideration #1

Make sure your book is appropriately edited. A big criticism of on demand published books is often they are rife with spelling, grammatical and syntax errors. You want a book you can be proud of. Thus, have your book edited. There is multiple ways to do this however. Of course, you can simply find and pay an editor. This can be costly but chances are good you’ll end up with a well edited book. The other option I actually learned from Stephen King’s book “On Writing”. Stephen recommends you give your finished manuscript to a group of your most objective friends along with a red marking pencil (the type used by your 5th grade English teacher). The idea is to ask them to be ruthlessly critical of your work and mark it up. Tell them to look for anything that can be improved upon including spelling, sentence structure, grammar, syntax and understandability. Even if you just get three of your manuscripts back from your friends chances are good that your book will be vastly improved. By the way, most of your friends will do this for free especially after mentioning that you plan to include them on the acknowledgments page.

Consideration #2

Make sure your book is well designed. This means the interior (or book block) and the cover. Both of these functions can be outsourced to a graphic designer. My recommendation here is to use a service like elance or scriptlance to find someone experienced and reasonably priced. Another alternative is to use a free service like craigslist to find someone. The key to outsourcing and the project resulting in an acceptable product is checking the quality of the portfolio of potential designers and writing very clear instructions of exactly how you want your cover and interior to look. By being as specific as you can be not only will you get a better finished product but in all likelihood you’ll pay less for the work because designers charge more for having to guess at what you like and often get it wrong.

Consideration #3

If you want to sell books YOU must market them. Fact is whether you are doing a book for on demand publishing or traditional trade publishing the onus is on you to market your book both before and after the book is published. The easiest way to do this is online. There are many online press release sites you can use as well as article marketing that can bring you traffic. Also, your book should be available both from your own website as well as major online retailers like Amazon.com.