Vanity, Blurb.com and self-publishing August 31, 2006
Posted by organicresearcher in Blogging, Books, Organic, Research, demos.trackback
I posted earlier about Blurb.com and promptly got a reply from Eoin Purcell, who is making some really interesting points, in particular about the long tail.
I think that Eion and myself are basically in agreement that Blurb.com offers a form of vanity publishing but is at least honest about that. I remember years ago being given a free copy of a book the author thought was very urgent and then found no one was interested and he was stuck with literally hundreds of copies – which he had paid for. So honest vanity press is a yes. If people want the affirmation or to be able to give a very personal gift – good for them.
What I am looking at it a way in which the technical, niche books can make use of the long tail and Blurb.com probably ain’t it at the moment. For example a 250 page text book, in hardcover is $60 at Blurb, so say you want 50 then you are at $3000. Over at Lulu.com you can get hardcover, 250 page text books, for the 50, at $801 or $16 dollars a unit. Whilst iUniverse, which doesn’t work in that way – will provide you with considerable editorial support, a chance to sell books and listings on Amazon and Barnes and Nobel for $799.
So when it comes to using the long tail I would say that other options are better than blurb.com. Why does this matter? well take a look at something like the Demos project into The Future of English. Self-publishing could fill an important role in all our futures, but it has to be financial possible.
Good points and perhaps I missed the subtelty earlier.
Perhaps it is time to look at a better delivery system than print?
The audience for really niche books is limited and potentially in many case know to the author.
By the sounds of it, editorial and design support are the key features. If you could get those for a reasonable price and free distribution to the audience by using digital files rather than print perhaps you would have solved the issue?
Eoin
[...] Vanity, Blurb.com and self-publishing [...]
[...] My most successful piece ever in terms of hits is about Blurb and Vanity publishing, the Private Intellectual takes a much harder line than me but comes to the same point. I’m still not sure about the future of publishing but eventually a model is going appear that empowers the author. In a long-tail world the books might sell, depends on what the readership of the blog is, but it is not an answer. What is really in demand is a path that is not vanity publishing, but provides editorial support and quality control without the conservatism of many publishers. At the moment those companies who are offering this on-line also want to retail the books, that is where the model folds. For it to truly work it needs an imprint that does not smack of vanity but of the rigour of editorial control, a kind of open-access publishing house, it works for academic journals – eventually it will work for books. [...]