Sel publishing

[alex whitmer]

I know absolutely squat about self publishing. For those of you who know, I have an ongoing article here on "How to Speak Script", a little project that went from a few tidbits to 100 pages of tid bits and growing.

Anyone here know how maybe I can publish it? make a few buck so I can make a few films?

I know, if it's here for free, who is dumb enough to buy it?

Ideas? I don't want to pull the pages down, and if I do publish, it would be an expanded version. What I have here is the basics.

I need to come up with 30,000.00 for a film sometime in 09, and maybe this can help.

a

[brianluce]

I don't know anything either but if you put it on a site and started getting traffic you can do one of those "google ad" programs and make money.

[Nathyn]

Yes. Createspace. That's where I get all my books done. I use Apple Pages then turn it into a PDF and upload it.

-Nate

[ConspiracyPenguin]

There is a self-publishing company called Lulu (http://www.lulu.com/) I have never published anything with them before but have looked into it a bit. From what I remember, their rates seemed reasonable. I don't know if you would get the distribution (and, thus, funds) you are looking for but it may be something worth considering. You definitely have a lot of fantastic information in there. Best of luck! :)

[Nathyn]

Lulu cost too much. CreateSpace is owned by Amazon.

-Nate

[Batutta]

Lulu cost too much. CreateSpace is owned by Amazon.

-Nate

Lulu is free to do everything, set up an account, upload materials. They only charge when you sell or print a copy. For something with a small pagecount 100-200 pages their rates aren't bad. And if you order in bulk you get a discount. Anyway, I've used them and the quality is very good. Cafepress is about the same.

[Nathyn]

I'm talking about sell price. Last time I checked out LuLu they took a big cut and to make a profit you had to charge very high prices unless something has changed. I'm going to check it out now.

-Nate

[Batutta]

I'm talking about sell price. Last time I checked out LuLu they took a big cut and to make a profit you had to charge very high prices unless something has changed. I'm going to check it out now.

-Nate

For a 200 page 8.5" x 11" b&w paperback they charge $8.53, any markup above that is your profit. Your average film subject paperback goes for around 12.95 so that's 3 bucks of profit for each book. That's way better than what you'd get per book if you were published by a big publishing house (which is about 2 1/2 to 5% of the cover price), but they can sell a lot more books.

[Nathyn]

What? Createspace would charge about $2.50 - $3.00 or so for something like this. The biggest you could go up to is about 8 x 10 but the work is very professional. (Not that Lulu isn't).

-Nate

[alex whitmer]

Thanks ... I'll look into both. So not my area.

Anybody want split profits if they set it all up?

[Batutta]

What? Createspace would charge about $2.50 - $3.00 or so for something like this. The biggest you could go up to is about 8 x 10 but the work is very professional. (Not that Lulu isn't).

-Nate

You're wrong. There are a whole other set of fees and other junk Amazon adds so it comes out about even. For say a 150 page book, their share is about $7.70 cents.

[Nathyn]

Not when you sale through your own site. They take bigger cuts on Amazon. I'm on the proplan. The Action Filmmaking Workbook cost $12.95. It's 8 x 10 116 pages. Selling a book from my site I make $8.12. If I sale a copy on Amazon I make $5.53. The beauty is I could buy a bunch for myself at around $2.24 per copy and sale them at certain events with no problem. Check it out. I sold 8 copies of Action Filmmaking and 3 WOS DVDs in one hour at the Black Harvest film fest here in Chicago. Made $110.00 in an hour and people loved it.

-Nate

[pixelated]

Start with Dan Poynter's Book on self publishing - it's pretty much the industry bible. Also try and catch one of his seminars - they're well worth the time. He has a newsletter which is great also. Full info @ http://parapub.com/sites/para/