The two translations that I have commissioned are coming along nicely. The Eusebius volume is pretty close to done.
So… how to turn these collections of Word documents into books? And how to sell the things when I have done so?
Off to Amazon, where I find that there is a small industry of people writing books on… how to self-publish your vanity novel. Hum. That is NOT the bracket I want to be in. There’s quite a few on “how to sell on Amazon”.
Trouble is, buy a few and it costs quite a lot of money. But my local library charges more than 5 GBP per interlibrary loan — around $8 — which means it’s actually not much more to just buy the things. (I do hate greedy local authorities). So I’ve bitten the bullet and bought four, and we’ll see what good they are.
I’ve also contacted a small UK publisher, Password Publishing, who offer to copyedit, do the book design, and typeset. They want about 20 GBP an hour for various activities, which doesn’t seem too bad. Whether they are any good I know not, but will let you know.
So… I don’t know how to sell this stuff. I do know that I need a quality product. I do know that just turning a Word document into a PDF will NOT produce something professional; it produces something hard on the eye and almost unreadable. And … I also need a business plan for this, to check that I’m not just burning money.
You might consider going with with Gorgias Press or Wipf and Stock.
True. In fact I could find various people to publish the book. Cambridge University Press were interested, for instance.
But … these will only pay an author’s royalty, of around 5%. Since few mainstream books sell more than 200 copies, I’d basically be giving the book away, and would have no hope of covering the costs.
And hey, if I was going to give the book away, I’d give it away to the world, not to a publisher.
So I need to find out how to sell books myself.
OK, I understand. Scholarly books are usually marketed to university libraries, of which there are more than 200 and can pay higher book prices. I don’t know how the economics would work in your case, and I assume you know much more about your own personal situation. It is true, however, that academic authors do not make much money from their scholarly books.
What I want to know, you know, is HOW these things are marketed to university libraries. Because obviously I want to do the same! Any ideas?
That’s why I suggesting these academic publishers (Edwin Mellen Press is another example). They do the marketing to university libraries. Otherwise, I have no clue how to do it.
I think that you will have to find an academic book vendor who will agree to sell your book. Either this or you will have to market the book yourself to the 200 or so libraries that would be interested. Let us know how it goes.
Interesting – what is an “academic book vendor”? I’d rather not do the marketing if I can avoid it, but am fairly resigned to it.