3 S.R. Johannes: Building the best self-publishing team

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Building the best self-publishing team

Miral Sattar (founder of Bibliocrunch, a service one-stop for self pubbers) stops by to talk about creating a great self pubbing team!

Why is building a publishing team important?

There is so much activity in the publishing space in terms of new platforms and tools that are accessible to everyone. There is no barrier to entry to publish a book anymore. The publishing industry is the last to go digital, hence it can be argued that it's going through the quickest transition. Because the tools are accessible to everyone there are a greater number of self-published and indie books published. Because so many books are being put out, there is also an increase in the number of “bad” books being published. “Bad” books have poor covers that someone used PowerPoint to create, or books that have clearly not been edited well. “Bad” books have grammar errors and are poorly formatted or not been proofed. Because of the rise of “bad’ books this has given self-publishers and indie authors a negative reputation.

So even though it's much easier to publish a book, it's even harder to get it noticed and make it stand out. By building a solid publishing team you make sure that you cover all your bases in the book publishing process. You don’t just need a good story but need someone to help you design a cover, you need editing (not yourself) from a professional editor, you need a proofer to make sure your book is free or errors and you need marketing for your book to help readers find you. You can pretty much get ‘Big Six’ publisher quality if you have put together a great publishing team because there are no publishing services that a big publisher can provide that you can’t get done through your own publishing team.

What is quality?

Quality is making sure that your book is in the best shape it can be for your reader: you have an eye-catching cover, a well-edited book without grammar mistakes or types, an error-free version that is converted correctly (you don’t want to run into the JK Rowling Last Vacancy situation J  where readers couldn’t adjust the font), a great landing page on Amazon which conveys what the book is about, having good meta data, and a good marketing plan. A lot of writers tell me that they don’t have any capitol to hire professionals for their book and can pretty much do everything for free themselves. Which is fine, if you don’t want anyone to buy your book and you just want to give it away for free.

Membership Special

We also have a special discount code for premium memberships. 
If you would like to join BiblioCrunch, use promo code UNTR to get 50% off a premium subscription with a number of bonus features.

BiblioCrunch helps connect authors and publishers with book publishing professionals to get new books and apps to market. With an exclusive community of professionals who have worked for some of the largest publishing houses, including Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Random House, and Harper Collins, BiblioCrunch authors can get access to resources that BIG SIX publishing have.

Miral Sattar
Miral Sattar is a NYC-based writer and tech entrepreneur. She is the founder and CEO of BiblioCrunch, a platform that connects authors with quality, vetted book publishing professionals. She has worked in the media industry for 11 years, most recently at TIME where she launched several digital initiatives including an iPad and mobile site, mobile apps, a video and podcast channel, blogs, and SEO. Her writing has been featured in TIME, CNN, NY Daily News, among other media publications. She has a MS in Publishing (Digital + Print Media) from NYU and a BS from
Columbia University in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. You can follow Miral on Twitter at @BiblioCrunch.

4 comments:

Natalie Aguirre said...

This sounds like a great resource. Thanks for sharing about it.

Unknown said...

Hi Natalie! Thanks! Let me know if you have any questions.

Anonymous said...

And the great thing about BiblioCrunch is it is not JUST for self-publishers, you can be a small press, big publishing house, traditional author, or a publishing professional and still join and connect with others. I'm really excited to see how it will grow!

Jemi Fraser said...

Sounds great! Thanks for the link & tips :)