Independent Book Publishing Strategies for Authors with Michele DeFilippo

Welcome to Milestone Moments, the show where we explore the journeys that lead to success. I'm Sheila Slick, your host and founder of Five Milestones. In every episode, we will bring you insights from the minds of entrepreneurs, leaders and experts who will share not just their expertise, but the milestone moments that have reshaped their journeys and led to significant achievements. So if you're looking for motivation, you're in the right place.

Subscribe now and discover the milestones that mark the path to success. Welcome to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. I'm Sheila Slick, your host. And today, my special guest is Michelle DeFilippo.

Michelle has more than 50 years of experience in book publishing, and her company, 1106 Design, makes it easy for authors to release a top -quality book, keep control of it, and earn more money every time they sell a copy. Michelle is on a mission to help authors ask the right questions to make informed decisions about publishing their books. Welcome to the show, Michelle. Thank you so much, Sheila.

It's great to be here. I'm going to learn a lot from you because you have over 50 years in the book publishing industry. Don't ask me how that happened. I don't know where all those years went, but yes.

So that's actually the first question. Why do you do what you're doing today? What led you to becoming a book publisher? Well, I wish I could tell you I had a plan, but basically I'm not actually I'm not a book publisher and we can talk about that.

But I got into publishing by accident. It was one of the first job interviews I went on at Crown Publishing in New York, where I grew up, and they offered me a job. And so I took it. And that was my introduction to the publishing industry.

And I loved it from the beginning. So if you don't do book publishing, tell me a little bit about 1106 Design. Okay, so what we do is provide services to authors who want to independently publish their book, right? So just to go back in time a little bit, it used to be that we only had traditional publishers, right?

And authors had to go through a traditional publisher in order to distribute their book. There was no other option. A bookstore would not carry a book that was released privately by an author. You had to use a publisher.

I don't know, 200 years, publishers would buy the rights to publish the manuscript from the author. They would hire the experts to produce the book, and they would do it very well. And in return for that investment, they would pay the author a small royalty when the book was sold. The author didn't have to pay for anything.

The author didn't have to do anything other than contribute the manuscript. And so that was a fair deal, right? Ordinary business transaction. So when Amazon came on the scene, all of a sudden it became possible for authors to independently publish their own book.

And that was the greatest earthquake in the publishing industry ever, right? Maybe even bigger than Gutenberg. So all of a sudden everyone's self -publishing their book. Now, at the beginning of self -publishing, though, authors understood that they needed to hire experts to produce the book.

And when... That book was sold. The author, who is now filling the role of the publisher, would get all of the revenue from sales, all of the net revenue from sales. And that went on for about maybe five or six years when indie publishing first started.

Somewhere along the line, and now continuing and getting worse by the day, we now have middleman publishers in the middle of those two options. They call themselves hybrid publishers. self -publishing companies. Sometimes they don't even use an adjective.

They just call themselves publishers now. So the author calls them up or makes contact and they tell the author, oh yes, it's going to cost you this many dollars to produce the book. And the author says, okay, they don't know any better. And What the authors don't know, however, is that in addition to charging them to produce the book, these middlemen publishers also take revenue out of their pocket on the back end when the book is sold.

So that doesn't work out really well for the author. And that's why I've been making myself available on these podcasts to talk about that. Well, let's continue that conversation. So what's the solution?

Well, the solution, we think, is to use an author services company. There are many. 1106 Design, my company, is one of them. And what we do is we provide the services authors need to prepare a market -quality book.

Editing, cover design, interior design, e -book formatting, help uploading your files to the printers and so forth. And we charge you once to do that. When your book is sold... It is printed through print -on -demand accounts that are set up in the author's name.

And so you get all the revenue, you get all the sales reports, and you have complete control of your publishing enterprise. So we think that's the best of both worlds and certainly better economically for authors who can make as much as $6 per book instead of the $2 or $3 that these publishers are paying them. Sometimes authors are making as little as 90 cents a book. So yeah, it's just economically better for sure and control better because the authors don't have to worry about their publisher disappearing or not paying the royalties.

They're in charge of their own book. So now let's talk a little bit about trends. Where are we in today's day and age with books? We have print books, we have audio books, we have e -books.

Well, everybody... I remember when e -books first came out, the first generation, it was sometime in the late 1990s. And at that time, everybody was predicting that there would no longer be print books. E -books were going to take over the industry and no one was ever again going to hold a book in their hand and read it.

Well, that never happened. You know, print books and e -books sell equally well, even today, all these years later. Audio books are selling like hotcakes, right? A smart publisher releases their book in all the formats they can.

Most people start with a print book and an e -book, and then they add the audio book later if they start to hear a demand for it. But if you give the buyer the choice, you're going to make more sales than if you make that choice for them. I think it's a mistake to release only an e -book. A lot of indie publishers do that because it's less expensive.

But a lot of people still like to read a real book, especially after... We're looking at screens all day. We don't want to look at screens after work. So print books still maintain their popularity.

I agree. I love reading and I love print books. And they're a lot more tangible. I was just traveling and it was, if I don't have it downloaded or the Wi -Fi.

Yet the book is just quiet and you can read it at your own pace. You don't have to listen to it. There's no noise, no headphones. So I am a reader.

So for anyone listening today that perhaps says, oh, I've always wanted to write a book or maybe they don't have the confidence, you know, from within thinking I have a story to tell. What message do you have for them? Well, I think everybody has a story to tell. right?

And even if you are writing on a popular subject that many hundreds of authors have written on before, nobody can do it just in exactly the same way you do. You will have a unique perspective. So as long as you focus on that, then you should have the courage to go forward because people are hungry for information, especially for new ideas. So I wouldn't be afraid of it.

Let's put it that way. But I think the main thing that The narrative that's in the marketplace right now, which is that a book is a do -it -yourself task or it should just be formatted in Microsoft Word or something like that, that's bad advice because that's not how a traditional publisher would produce a book. So what you want to be sure you do is hire experts who are experienced, know what they're doing, and can prepare for you a quality book that buyers will be impressed with.

Because if people... buy an amateurish book and they feel they wasted their money, they're going to be angry and they're going to post bad reviews. And you never want that. No.

So what are the advantages of becoming a published author? For most, for business people especially, it's a way to build authority. And it doesn't even have to be a long book. It can be a short lead magnet, like my little book, Publish Like the Pros.

I give that away for free on my website. And it can just be the information that's in your head, right? You already know what your expertise is. So put it down without fear.

It doesn't matter how messy it is. There are experts who can take it from there, clean it up, organize it, turn it into something that's marketable for you. I love that. So where can we find you online?

You can find us at 1106design .com. And I promise we will not spam your inbox after you contact us. We do business the old -fashioned way.

We have a nice conversation with you if you click the contact form and introduce yourself. And from there, we'll see if we're a good fit. And we love making great books for people who want to publish. What would be one key takeaway or a tip you'd want to leave our audience today?

Well, if you've worked hard on your manuscript and you have a story to tell and you have information to share, don't cut corners. Do it well because the buyers will understand the difference. If you cut corners, they're going to see that. If you do it well, they're going to see that and they're going to recommend your book to other people.

Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Michelle. Thank you, Sheila. And thank you all for tuning in to another episode of Milestone Moments in Business and Leadership. Until next time.