There is a thread on the Absolute Writers forum about soemone who told a self-publisher that her book was not a “real” book. This is a criticism that I’ve heard many times in my publishing career.

There is always somebody in the “publishing world” who is eager to put down a POD book as not “real.”

What is the definition of a book? According to Wikipedia: “A book is a set or collection of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of paper, parchment, or other material, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A book produced in electronic format is known as an e-book.”

Another definition I found is: “book n. Abbr. b., B., bk.1. A volume made up of written or printed pages fastened along one side and encased between protective covers.2. Any written or printed literary work. 3. A bound volume of blank or ruled pages.”

A while back a young newspaper reporter attended one of my self-publishing seminars and told the class that my books are not “real books.” I asked her what her definition of a book was and she said Something that is published by a traditional publishing house.” I then asked her how many books she had written and had published. She admitted none. I then asked her for a ballpark figure what she made annually. She said about $16,000. I explained to her that I took in about six times that much this year publishing books that were not “real” by her definition, and my money was “real” when I spent it.

Don’t worry about the people who will run your work down, just ignore them and go forward. By the way, those people are usually employees of a publishing company. As a self-publisher you are the boss, something they don’t have the courage to be. Remember, those who can’t, criticize. My motto is “Living well is the best revenge.”

But back to your original question, I use Time New Roman for all of my book text, and I currently have five books and eight specialty guides in print, as well as a bi-monthly nationally circulated tabloid RV newspaper www.gypsyjournal.net.

Find a need and fill it is a tried and true business axiom. For self-publishers, it is a recipe for success.

I have made a lot of money over the years publishing small niche guides for people who travel in recreational vehicles. These guides are simple booklets running from 20 to 60 pages that I print on my laser printer, add a colored paper front and back page, and sell through our Gypsy Journal RV Travel Newspaper and our website at www.gypsyjournal.net. They include a guide to free campgrounds, a guide to fairgrounds with RV parking, and a guide to reliable repair services across the country. RVers have found that these guides can save them a lot of money, and many customers buy an updated version of each guide every year. We have found a need and filled it.

Niche opportunities like this are everywhere you look. Let me give you a couple of examples from a recent vacation we took.

We just returned from an eight day stay on a houseboat in Key West, Florida. It was a wonderful experience; we soaked up the sun on white sand beaches, prowled through the Old Town neighborhoods, and gorged ourselves on fresh seafood.

Visitors to the Florida Keys can find a multitude of information on the tourist traps awaiting them, but we are not party animals and don’t usually care for the typical tourist attractions. We had a hard time locating good information on the things that interested us. This is where a couple of good niche guides would have served us well.

We brought our kayaks with us, because we love getting out on the water. You would think that on an island like Key West finding a place to put our boats in the water would be easy, but it’s almost impossible. Just about every foot of water access is either on private property, owned by the big resorts that allow access only to their guests, or is part of the several military facilities on the island. We found ourselves driving 40 miles north to the less populated, smaller keys to launce our kayaks. I’d have gladly bought any guide I could have found to public access sites in the region.

We always enjoy exploring old cemeteries, and the City Cemetery in Key West is the final resting place for pirates, pioneers, smugglers, and soldiers. The above ground crypts rival anything you’ll find in New Orleans cemeteries. But there was no guide to who is buried where. Again, we’d have paid for such a publication.

As I said, we ate a lot of seafood in the Florida Keys, but we try to avoid the well known tourist restaurants, preferring the small out of the way places the locals favor. We were lucky in that we met some folks who pointed us toward a couple of very good dining establishments, but I know we missed plenty more. A Dining Guide would have been invaluable.

So here we have three opportunities for a self-publisher to turn a profit in one small, relatively isolated, corner of the United States. I’m sure people with other interests could have used other niche guides. How many opportunities are there in your area? What needs could you fill?

Writing your book is the easy part, in my experience. Marketing is where the real work starts, and most successful self-publishers I know spend more time on their marketing efforts than they do in the writing process.

As you may already know, I sell very few books through traditional bookstores. I use Lightning Source www.lightningsource.com to do my printing, and they handle sales and fulfillment to Amazon and other bookstores for me, though I could do it myself.

Most of my sales are direct to the consumer, either in person at RV events or when I speak someplace, or through our Gypsy Journal website www.gypsyjournal.net and newspaper. I also have affiliate marketing agreements with several RV websites that sell my books. It all adds up.

I also feel that every book should have its own website or at least an author website with a page that highlights each of your books. Here is a page from my motorcycle travel website www.motorcycletravelonline.com highlighting one of my books: http://motorcycletravelonline.com/Highway_History.htm.

I say that you should have a web page for each of your books, even though I have not done it for each of my own books. But if you sat in on one of my self-publishing workshops you would hear me stress the importance of it. So do as I say, not as I do.

Get a copy of John Kremer’s 1001 Ways To Market Your Books, it is an invaluable resource. John’s website is www.bookmarket.com. It has taught me a lot and help me sell a lot of books.

I was speaking to a small writers’ group in Tennessee a couple of weeks ago, and had a conversation with a young man who complained that agents, editors, and publishers won’t give him a break. He said he has sent his autobiography to “at least” six or seven agents and two different large publishing houses, and has never even received the courtesy of a reply.

I asked him if he had sent out query letters ahead of time, or just sent his manuscript unsolicited. He acknowledged that the latter was true, but so what, his story was remarkable and deserved to be told.

“Okay, I’ll bite,” I told him, “You’re what, 23, 25 and you’ve written your autobiography? You haven’t even lived yet. What makes your story marketable.”

He then explained that at the age of fifteen, growing up without a father, he wanted a skateboard. When his mother said she could not afford it, he got a part time job during the summer and earned enough money to buy the skateboard himself.

“And?”

He looked confused. “And what?”

“And then what happened,” I asked him. “Did you go on to become a world class skateboarder and get product endorsement from manufacturers? Did the experience motivate you to start your own successful skateboard shop? Did you break your back and spend the next five years learning to walk again? What?”

“Uh… no. I just enjoyed my skateboard. But my story shows that even a kid with a deprived childhood can make his dreams come true in America, even today. It’s like the quintessential American success story, right?”

“No,” I told him. ‘It’s like… nothing. You worked a couple of weeks and achieved a short term goal. So what? As an editor or an agent, why do I want to read your stuff? Nobody cares. Nobody’s going to buy it.”

He argued that I was wrong, that he just knew that if American kids heard his story, they would all be motivated to do great things. I started to explain again to him that he had no story to tell, or to sell, but he became frustrated and stormed out of the room, saying “You’re just like everybody else. You just don’t get it!”

I can’t tell you how many similar conversations I’ve had with would be authors of all ages over the years. Everybody has a story to tell, and they all think it’s worth hearing. But unless you’re a rock star, a famous athlete, or have wrestled a polar bear into submission with your bare hands (no pun intended), nobody outside of your immediate family cares. And a lot of them don’t care either, they’re just being polite.

It’s okay to read fantasy, but if you want to make a living in writing and publishing, you have to live and work in the real world.

The newspaper industry is currently in a transition state. Just as you once purchased a pound of coffee, and now the container only holds about 13 ounces (for the same price), over the years newspapers have been going to smaller paper sizes to save money.

A lifetime ago, when I was a greenhorn youngster just getting into the publishing business a tabloid page measured 18 inches high and was printed two-up on what was called a 36 inch web. Over time the size dropped to 17 inches (a 34 inch web) and then sized jumped all over the place before they standardized on a 16 inch page printed on a (32 inch web).

Every time this has happened, the folks down in the trenches doing the real work of producing the newspaper have to tear everything apart and completely redesign their pages to accommodate the smaller web sizes.

About four or five years ago, the bean counters in the front offices decided to put the screws to the reading public and the advertisers again, and everything went smaller again, finally stabilizing on a 25 inch web. Well, guess what? They’re at it again, and it looks like the standard will be (for a while at least) a 24 inch web.

Over time you may not have noticed this gradual downsizing, but if you are a regular daily newspaper reader, you may have noticed that the type sizes keep getting smaller and smaller. It’s not your eyes (well, maybe it is, we’re all getting older), they just keep trying to cram the same amount of content onto a smaller page. Eventually your daily newspaper will be the size of a paperback book.

I’ve been busy with speaking gigs the last few weeks and haven’t had time to post to the blog. While I wanted to be an author from as far back as I can recall, the idea of being a public speaker terrified me. Yet it has become a large part of my work, and has helped my career grow in ways I never expected. I just posted a page on the Publishing4Profit website on how I stumbled onto this unforseen part of my life, ands why you too should work to develop your public speaking abilities. Check it out at Writing and Public Speaking

My new toy arrived yesterday! My first impression is that the Amazon Kindle e-book reader is everything I had hoped it would be and even more.

I had read several reviews that said the page navigation buttons on both sides of the screen take some getting used to, and indeed they do. Several times I have accidentally switched pages when reading, but all it takes is a touch on the Previous Page button and I’m back where I started.

Unlike a laptop computer screen, the Kindle screen is easy to read outside in bright sunlight, or inside the bus. I love having the ability to change type size. No more reading glasses for me! One feature I especially like is the ability to download a free sample chapter of a book before I purchase it. I downloaded several yesterday afternoon and found a couple I want, and a couple I’m glad I didn’t spend my money on. The ability to carry a library of hundreds, even thousands of books, makes the Kindle a winner for the RV crowd. Check it out by clicking here.

In addition to advertising revenue, don’t forget the power of your blog as a marketing tool. We hold two RV rallies a year for our subscribers, and as soon as I announce the dates in my RV blog registrations start rolling in.

Last week I announced in my RV Blog that we now have T-shirts made up for our rallies and for the Gypsy Journal itself. So far we have sold over 65 shirts, at $15 each.

I decided that I want an Amazon Kindle e-book reader, which sells for close to $400 with shipping, and I needed some quick money. So I announced a special on one of my e-books on the RV Blog. Actually, it was not a special, we usually sell the e-book in CD format and snail mail it to the customer for $24.95. But in the blog post I said if they order it for e-mail delivery, I would throw in seven Special Reports, which sell for $2.50 each, or all seven for $10. The blog went up on a Tuesday morning, and I received six orders, totaling $149.70, within 24 hours. On Thursday I gave blog readers another little nudge, reminding them of the e-book offer, and got seven more orders.

Friday I wrote that I was only three more e-books orders away and I could buy my Kindle. More orders came in. By Saturday morning, I had sold 20 of the e-books, taking in $499. In return, all I had to do was send out an e-mail with the e-book and Special Reports attached.

Comments attached to the orders said things like “Here’s my order, Nick, I bet I’ll be the one to put you over the top” and “Okay, now how far away are we?”

Suddenly, it had become an endeavor that we were all involved in. We needed to make enough sales to pay for the Kindle. When you get your readers that involved, you have done a good job of building a following.

So do not overlook the power of blogging to sell your books, products and services. Get your readers involved with you, and they will stand in line to help you achieve your goals.

I currently have four self-published books in print, along with seven niche guides, a couple of informational CDs, and several more in the works. But you would be hard pressed to find any of them in a traditional bookstore. You can go to your favorite bookstore or Amazon and they can order them through the Ingram Book Group, and the books will be sent directly from Lightning Source, my printer, to the book store. I don’t get involved in the process, and I don’t want to.

Why?

Because bookstore sales are just not worth the effort to me. Nor is Amazon. The return on the time invested is minimal. If you go to my main website and read my article What Is Publishing 4 Profit? you will learn that I have developed my business model from an entrepreneurial standpoint, and I work to get the maximum return for the effort expended.

I write and self-publish specialty books that fill the needs of specific niche markets. My marketing efforts are focused directly at those markets. My RVing and travel books are marketed through our RV website at www.gypsyjournal.net, through the print edition of our Gypsy Journal RV Travel Newspaper, at our vendor booths at RV rallies, from back of the room sales when I present seminars at RV events, and through affiliate agreements with other RV websites that sell our books. The few retail outlets that sell my books are mostly RV supply stores, RV dealers, and campground offices.

As you can see, I market to RVers. Why waste my time and efforts trying to convince a bookstore to carry my books, where maybe one customer out of a hundred or more has an RV or is interested in RV travel, when I can reach a customer base that is 100% interested in what I produce? The other great thing about the non-bookstore retail and online dealers who sell my books is that they pay up front, they get a 25% discount (as opposed to the 40% or more that bookstores demand), and there are no returns to deal with.

Given that, why would I want to waste my time with bookstores? Should you?

For quite some time now I have been earning a few hundred dollars a month from Google AdSense advertising links on my three websites. Contrary to what the get rich quick gurus would have you believe, it is not simply a matter of throwing up a quickie website, pasting in a bit of HTML code from AdSense, and sitting back to watch the money roll in. But by blogging steadily on my Gypsy Journal RV website, constantly adding new content to all three websites, and now adding this blog to the self-publishing website, I have created a small but steady secondary income stream.

Three weeks ago I signed up with the Amazon Associates program, added relevant ads to my websites, and also set up storefronts on all three websites. The RV website has inventory related to RVing, the self-publishing website has books on writing and publishing, and the motorcycle website has ads for motorcycle books and equipment.

So far the results have been under-whelming, to say the least. While my daily income from AdSense is usually well over $10 a day, and often as much as $20 or more, in three weeks I have earned a grand total of 70 cents with the Amazon program!

As a self-publisher, I have never been a fan of Amazon. They are sort of the WalMart of the publishing world, bullying small publishers by the sheer weight of their numbers. In fact, I don’t even list my books with Amazon. My printer, Lighting Source, does make them available to Amazon customers and I get a small check every quarter that pays for an evening out, if we skip desert and order small portions. But it just isn’t worth my time. I think I’ll soon make the same decision about the Amazon Associates program.