So how does independent publishing work?

In the olden days, a few years ago, you had to pay a lot of money for a book design, hire an offset printer, pay the printer a large amount of money to set up the plates for your job, print 3,000 or so books to keep down the cost per book, pay for them up front, have them shipped to you, and find a place to store them where they won’t mildew. Then you had to take orders and ship the books.

But now, we have Print On Demand!

Once you upload your files to Lightning Source or the printer of your choice and approve the proof, you’re done!

Print on Demand (POD) printers print and ship one book at a time. Or 10. Or 100. Or 1,000. The cost per book is the same, usually around $5 for a 6" x 9" 300-page trade paperback. They will charge you an upload fee and a fee for the proof copy, and if you need to revise the file, there will be an additional upload fee for that, but the basic cost of uploading a book to Lightning Source is around $100. That includes interior, cover, and the proof copy.

When you publish with Lightning Source, their parent company, Ingram, will list your book in their catalog, and eventually Amazon.com and other online bookstores will access Ingram’s database and add your book to their catalog. (Bookstores also order from Ingram. Libraries order from both Ingram and Baker & Taylor, and Lightning Source will add your book to both catalogs.)

When someone orders your book from Amazon.com or another online bookstore, the bookstore will order a copy from Lightning Source, and Lightning Source will print it within 24 hours and drop ship it to the customer. If you are selling more than a handful of books, Amazon may start to stock a small quantity.

Amazon collects the price of the book from the customer and pays Lightning Source the wholesale cost of the book. Lightning Source will allow you to set any discount you want. For example, if the retail price of the book is $15, a 40% discount makes the wholesale cost of the book $9. Lightning Source will take around $5 of that for printing costs and will deposit the $4 left into your bank account.

You will pay Lightning Source more per book than you would pay an offset printer for a run of 3,000 books, but you don’t have to worry about warehousing an inventory, taking orders, accepting payments, and shipping books.

Your contract with most POD printers is non-exclusive, which means that if you want a run of offset books from another printer, you can do business there.

Your contract with Amazon.com and other online bookstores is also non-exclusive. You can sell your book anywhere you want, including from your own website.