Gordon,
One thing I would caution any author is to choose a publisher/printer wisely. My book, "Seitengewehr; History of the German Bayonet 1919-1945" was published by Bender Publishing. Generally speaking, the author and publisher work out who does what and who gets what in return. I choose a well known military publisher and did not have to print or market or ship books out. Frankly, I took no risk and retained the copyright in return for a percentage of the gross sales.
If one self publishes the author accepts considerable risk and sometimes fronts money for printing. I know authors who were $30,000 out of pocket before selling a single book. The network of book dealers is often not open (or even known) to the author and quality sometimes suffers. I have read self published books where the pages fall out from poor construction and even some well known collector book publishers produce shoddy products. I just did a book review where I had to criticize the author for shoddy proof reading which should have been caught when reading the galley proofs or blue pages. All this onus falls back onto the author simply because he made a poor choice in publishing. There are many pitfalls so I would advise any author to consider everything before signing a contract.
You are doing a wise thing in starting this thread. Good luck!
George
One thing I would caution any author is to choose a publisher/printer wisely. My book, "Seitengewehr; History of the German Bayonet 1919-1945" was published by Bender Publishing. Generally speaking, the author and publisher work out who does what and who gets what in return. I choose a well known military publisher and did not have to print or market or ship books out. Frankly, I took no risk and retained the copyright in return for a percentage of the gross sales.
If one self publishes the author accepts considerable risk and sometimes fronts money for printing. I know authors who were $30,000 out of pocket before selling a single book. The network of book dealers is often not open (or even known) to the author and quality sometimes suffers. I have read self published books where the pages fall out from poor construction and even some well known collector book publishers produce shoddy products. I just did a book review where I had to criticize the author for shoddy proof reading which should have been caught when reading the galley proofs or blue pages. All this onus falls back onto the author simply because he made a poor choice in publishing. There are many pitfalls so I would advise any author to consider everything before signing a contract.
You are doing a wise thing in starting this thread. Good luck!
George
Comment