Re: 6 reasons Mike Volpe (and you!) should self-publish a book

Hey there old pal --

Too soon to toss "books" and "publish" in a subject line? 

No apologies, dude. I know you've got time on your hands, and I think you need to use it to self-publish a book. So here are six reasons you should ditch the traditional publishing house and self-publish with us:

1. Publishing houses historically relied on control. Control of message, control of audience, control of sales. They were monumentally awful at marketing, which is why even today they still schlep the majority of true marketing efforts onto authors. As a marketer, you've got the chops and the digital audience that any publishing house would kill for. They don't believe in your message -- they just want a slice of the audience they didn't know how to find themselves. As a marketer, you're 60% to the finish line on selling copies of a book.

2. You own it, you own it, you own it. You own the messaging, the look, the feel, the delivery. You do. If you want to sell your book for 99 cents every Friday, go right ahead. If you want to promote giveaways, do it. A self-published book done right (ahem!) gives you an advocate for your book, but you control the final product and its marketing/sales.

3. It's so easy. You technically don't even need me or my brilliant creatives to publish a book. Granted, your book might look a little disheveled and have a bunch of grammatical errors, but it still gets published and off the ground with $150 for the ISBN and barcode. Amazon and Ingram have free self-publishing tools where you can upload a PDF of your cover, a PDF of your interior design and start selling on demand in about 35 minutes. 

4. It lets you be loyal to your audience alone. With significant certainty I can say: all you need is to drive traffic to your Amazon listing for reviews and purchases. If your audience is primarily digital, that means they're also on a feeding tube to Amazon. They can buy your book there. They don't need 150 different places to buy a book. Amazon is enough to get you off the ground.

5. The ROI is nutso. The average author signed by a traditional publishing house sees $5,000 - $10,000 upfront royalty and then about 25 cents per book sold when priced at $14.99 retail. With self-publishing, the ROI per book is about $2.25. The sky's the limits, and I'm not exaggerating.

6. I'm not looking for royalties. I'm looking to spend my days helping intelligent people tell stories in creative ways. And I'm trying to put some really smart people on my team to work on interesting projects, not just projects that pay the bills.

I think you should publish a book, and I think it should be with me because I've been collecting outrageously talented, beat down creatives during the past 8 years in publishing and marketing, and I'm trying to row this self-publishing ship into uncharted territory. 

You'd be a great client, and I know we could find the right story to tell. Whaddya say, Mike?

-- 

Amanda Bray

Abridge Publishing