Print-on-Demand, Self-Publishing, and the World of Economics: A Podcast

September 14th, 2007 · 3 Comments
by Kassia Krozser

One of the great features of the Booksquare/Medialoper complex is the awesome production studio. It’s not unusual for the team (cats, humans, squirrels, random strangers) to go straight from the conference facilities to the microphone to talk about the big ideas of our era. Luckily for you, cooler heads often prevail the next morning.

Except this time. Kirk Biglione interviewed author Timothy Sykes about his experiences with self-publishing and print-on-demand for Medialoper. Then Kirk thought, “You know, that chick who writes for Booksquare has a lot of opinions on this topic.” A glass(ish) of wine later…voila! Or maybe…two for price of one. Part one of the podcast is Kirk’s interview. Part two, well, you’ve been warned.

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File Under: Non-Traditional Publishing

3 responses so far ↓

  • Edward Champion’s Return of the Reluctant » Putting the POD Into Podcast // Sep 14, 2007 at 1:51 pm

    […] and Medialoper have entered into the podcasting fray with a print-on-demand discussion with author Timothy […]

  • tod goldberg // Sep 15, 2007 at 12:11 pm

    I think it helps that Sykes is putting a ton of money into a PR firm to promote his book — what did he say? 50K ? 75K? — and that he’s got a platform to sell from, namely the television. And for nonfiction, POD really does have practical applications, particularly if you’re able to drive large amounts of sales through your own website or personal appearances. But for fiction, it’s simply not practical in any form, particularly since no book store will carry the work and, as you noted, even Stephen King can’t convincingly sell his own work through his website alone. The majority of books sold happen in person and until such a time that that changes, you have to put the food down where people eat. I agree that POD makes conceptual sense, but for fiction writers, it doesn’t make business sense.

  • Timothy Sykes // Sep 15, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    Hey, thanx again for the great interview. The $50-$75k is not just for PR (that’s only about $20k), the rest is because I’m not going to just be a one book author, but instead launch many financial products that aren’t full of BS.

    That said, most of my press is from bloggers so if you don’t want to spend the $20k, just work your butt off contacting every blogger in your field and get your book out there. Yuo gotta remember everybody is starving for unique content so if you can give it to them, you become useful. Viral baby, viral!