Publicity and Distribution for Outsiders
Carol Howland
Carol Howland, who chairs the Society of Authors, Nice, is the author of several high quality travel books, including Dragons on the Roof: A Year in Vietnam (The Goi, 2008) and Vietnam: Globetrotter Travel Guide (New Holland, 2002). She points out the problems she has encountered in publishing in Vietnam and particularly the built-in barriers to publicity and distribution in the West. This is a warning, she notes, to anyone embarking on a self-publishing venture.
It will be interesting to hear what is discussed at the next First Tuesday in Paris (7 May 2009) on self publishing.
Let me share with you my own experience in a somewhat related domain. My books are published in Vietnam where, although the country has joined the ISBN system, they still haven't got a proper international publishing system up and running. This means that I find myself, in the West, in a situation similar to someone who has self-published. I have to act personally as the distributor of my books! Yes, they can be ordered with a credit card through the publisher's website, but no Western bookshop will do this -- they are used to ordering books, sell or return. Vietnamese publishers only sell books and make them pay for the postage as well. You can understand the problem.
I know that theoretically you can sell books on Amazon, if you use their in-house self-publishing services. So, a friend put one of my books on Amazon's Sell My Stuff site -- with my dubious backing. How, I wondered, is anyone to do a search when they do not know my name? Finding my book on Amazon is surely going to be about as likely as stumbling across one's great aunt's favourite tea set in a shop window ten years after she has died.
My worst fears were confirmed. If I now do an Amazon search on Vietnam, my book doesn't doesn’t appear in the first 30 (!) pages.
So I would be very interested in what self-publishers have to say about distribution and selling their books on anything beyond a local bookshops-round-the-corner basis.
Carol Howland, who chairs the Society of Authors, Nice, is the author of several high quality travel books, including Dragons on the Roof: A Year in Vietnam (The Goi, 2008) and Vietnam: Globetrotter Travel Guide (New Holland, 2002). She points out the problems she has encountered in publishing in Vietnam and particularly the built-in barriers to publicity and distribution in the West. This is a warning, she notes, to anyone embarking on a self-publishing venture.
It will be interesting to hear what is discussed at the next First Tuesday in Paris (7 May 2009) on self publishing.
Let me share with you my own experience in a somewhat related domain. My books are published in Vietnam where, although the country has joined the ISBN system, they still haven't got a proper international publishing system up and running. This means that I find myself, in the West, in a situation similar to someone who has self-published. I have to act personally as the distributor of my books! Yes, they can be ordered with a credit card through the publisher's website, but no Western bookshop will do this -- they are used to ordering books, sell or return. Vietnamese publishers only sell books and make them pay for the postage as well. You can understand the problem.
I know that theoretically you can sell books on Amazon, if you use their in-house self-publishing services. So, a friend put one of my books on Amazon's Sell My Stuff site -- with my dubious backing. How, I wondered, is anyone to do a search when they do not know my name? Finding my book on Amazon is surely going to be about as likely as stumbling across one's great aunt's favourite tea set in a shop window ten years after she has died.
My worst fears were confirmed. If I now do an Amazon search on Vietnam, my book doesn't doesn’t appear in the first 30 (!) pages.
So I would be very interested in what self-publishers have to say about distribution and selling their books on anything beyond a local bookshops-round-the-corner basis.
posted by SOAF Chairman at 9:05 AM
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