On-Demand Book Publishing

Earlier this week I was contacted by Philip Davis of Utah. He runs two interesting websites. ZDocs Online is a self-publishing service for hardcover and softcover books, seminar materials, and direct mail. Authors on the Net is a community of 400 authors, and the site helps them to self-promote their work. I think Davis was correct in stating that Supraterranean and his two sites share similar goals. But he’s been at it far longer than I have. He said:

“I have been helping authors self-publish for eight years and self-promote for the past three years. I have a kit called ‘Self-Publishing in a Box’ that takes authors through a step-by-step process to build a business around the book. I am currently working on an online training course called ‘The Author Platform’ that should help authors build a strong platform. This is scheduled to release in January ‘09.”

Davis was kind enough to mention and link to Supraterranean on his blog. He quoted my email, which is a pretty good statement of how I feel about self-publishing. I said:

“I developed Supraterranean with little knowledge of the existing options for writers and artists to self-publish using the power of the Internet. However, I’ve been realizing more and more that this is an important thing to explore and build upon. I personally was unsatisfied with the concept of fighting against the traditional obstacles built into the journalism and book industries. Plus, those industries are facing difficulties — some common, some unique — that make me want to find a better way. I have yet to write a book of my own, but I may very well need help with self-promotion in the near future.”

Naturally all of us who enjoy books are hoping that there will always be some way to publish them. But book publishing as a mass-production business might not survive. With the economy suffering and the cost of paper and other production materials increasing, I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the future, paper publishing is far exceeded by electronic publishing. Maybe book publishing will become a totally “on demand” enterprise, since it’s apparently not a profitable one anyways. Davis also linked to this blog post by Moonrat, an editorial assistant in the publishing industry — but he argues that the publishing industry can still bounce back. Who knows.