About that book you wanted to write...

UPDATE: See Jeff’s comment about PrintSource — my bad. I knew if I tried to talk about this I’d get it wrong. Should’ve interviewed Jeff to start with.

Last week I wrote about how a bunch of nobodies in Newnan, GA, have nonetheless become authors, mainly because no one told them not to. (Full disclosure: Had anyone told us not to, it would have only spurred us to do it anyway.)

But how do we get those Scrivener files to turn into actual books for sale on Amazon and other places?

The traditional route — and yes, the one that leads to bestseller lists and interviews on NPR — is not so much a mystery to me as it is a lot of work. There are tons of books and consultants out there prepared to help you negotiate the complex dance of agents, editors, and publishers; I am not one of them, alas. (One place to start is Publishers Marketplace.)

I considered it, because to be honest I think that Lichtenbergianism: procrastination as a creative strategy could have been a credible hit had it been published by one of the big houses. I even read a good book on the process and benefited from it. But in the end I realized that I had a publisher sitting by my fire pit on the regular, and thus The Lichtenbergian Press imprint of Boll Weevil Press was born.

I asked the founder of Boll Weevil, Lichtenbergian W. Jeffery Bishop, to remind me which print-on-demand [POD] service we’ve been using. He pointed me to PrintSource, which I probably could have found in my own records somewhere.

We’ve been very pleased with the quality of the PrintSource’s product. If you’ve bought Lichtenbergianism, it came from there. (If you check the back of the book, you can see the date it was printed — thus POD.)

Jeff has handled all the behind-the-scenes stuff, like snagging the ISBN number and registering it with Amazon, but I can’t imagine that involves more than clicking a few buttons. (I did the admittedly crappy ebook version in a hurry two years ago to meet demand — apologies, y’all — and registered it myself. Our protocols are messy.) I’ll ask him to leave any thoughts in comments. (What — interview him? What kind of talk is that?)

There are other POD services, of course, but do your due diligence. Not all of them are honest and not all of them are quality. Some will lay claim to rights they have no business claiming. Find all of that out beforehand. Spare yourself the drama.

Or better yet, attract the attention and admiration of an actual literary agent. It’s all going to be work, one way or the other. This does not come easy.

Next up: What if your book is crappy?