Why I Self-Publish

I recently completed and published a book called Falling: Amazing Survival Stories. I self-published it through my company, Green Harbor Publications. I've done this multiple times with books large and small. I like the ability to have full control over the process and the final product. I also doubt whether a commercial publisher would have any interest in publishing my work, which tends to be around niche topics. With this new book I believe that there will be a wider audience, and yet still I chose to self-publish. As usual, I wanted full control, but I also realized that for a publisher to even consider publishing my work, they need to see some kind of track record. Since this is the first book I have ever illustrated, I don't have much of a track record except for the dozens of journals that I have written and drawn in over the years. That being said, I believe that I am the world's foremost expert on long-fall survival stories. I have been collecting them since 2001 on my web site, The Free Fall Research Page. I have answered more than 100 questions about falling on the Free Fall Research Page. I appeared on an episode called "Surviving the Impossible" of The History Channel's program, The UnXplained (hosted by William Shatner).

Many of you know that I have a degree in Printing Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology and that I worked for Linotype-Hell before going into market research with CAP Ventures (later known as InfoTrends, and even later as a part of Keypoint Intelligence). Before that I was a freelance paste-up artist for Boston-area book publishers. I lived through the PostScript and Desktop Publishing revolutions and saw first hand the benefits of on-demand printing for the book market. One of the reasons that on-demand printing appealed to me was that I saw how it put power into the hands of content creators like me.

For my books I have used the online self-publishing company Lulu.com for about twenty-five years. I am still in awe of what you can get for no money down. If you are savvy enough to be able to create PDFs of your book's cover and book block, you can sell copies of your book through their web interface without paying any upfront costs. You receive money for every copy sold. If you want copies of your own for talks or other events, you can order them for a reasonable amount. You don't have to stockpile printed copies. You can just order what you need, as you need them.

I haven't always used ISBNs for my books. Whether a book could be ordered through Amazon or other booksellers didn't matter to me. This time, for Falling: Amazing Survival Stories, I chose to include one. I think this book could draw enough interest that it could be worth it. The ISBN and the accompanying barcode cost me $150. Each copy of my 144-page book has a print cost of $7.66. The retail price of the book is $19.95. If I sell a copy myself, I make about $12. I get a little less than $10 when a book sells through Lulu's online bookstore (they take a cut of the profit, which I think is fair for what they provide).

All of this talk of profit is a little deceiving. I make very little money from these books. Over the decades I have made enough money each year to go out for dinner with my wife a couple of times. The money is not why I do this. I simply want to complete these projects. Usually it's because I find the topics interesting, or in the case of my book, The Black Cats of Amherst, it's because I have a personal connection. My grandfather served as an ambulance driver in World War I in a U.S. Army unit called SSU 539 (aka the Black Cats of Amherst).

Though money is not the reason I publish these books, it does come into play. Most of the books I have done are in letter-size format (8.5" x 11") with a color cover and a monochrome book block. I try to price them at no more than $20, but the cost goes up as the page count does. For Falling: Amazing Survival Stories I wanted not only a color cover, but also color throughout the rest of the book. To do so in an economic fashion, I cut the size of the book in half (5.5" x 8.5") and limited the page count to 144 pages. (That number was selected because it is a multiple of 4 and 6, which in the world of book production assured that there would not be extraneous blank pages at the end of the book due to some oddity of page imposition.)

I am happy to be living in a time when the power to self-publish is made possible by on-demand printing and online services like Lulu. If you are interested in copies my new book, you can buy them through my Lulu author page, or you can reach out to me directly (message me through LinkedIn or see my contact information) and I will mail you a signed copy. That's one thing Lulu can't do. The book has to pass through my hands if you want me to sign it.