"James,

"In looking at many of your books, I notice there is no listing or indication of Amazon publishing. In one (Retrogenesis) you list NERD CHURCH book and list you and another for copyright. Does Amazon not list themselves as publisher? Also: Who retains the rights?"

-David

"Hi James,

"I greatly admire Taboo You, which is my number 1 choice of manhood/barbarian books. I enclose my take on the topic. If you like this, I would be grateful if you could let me know of any publishers worth trying. (I am too broke to do the usual self-publishing.)"

-Regards, Joseph

I use the Amazon subsidiary Print On Demand [POD] service Create Space for all of my print publishing. My web master Charles does all e-books. The kindle template on create Space gets bundled and doesn’t get much money back to you. I suggest doing your own PDF and selling it on your own site to finance the site, which is your advertising platform.

The copyright remains mine.

In preparation for my untimely death, I have dispersed my print books into three accounts.

Nerd Church is my agent Erique’s account, opened with an email address, which is all you need. Erique and I share that account. He takes the royalties and uses it to buy samples to promote my work for other media like comics. He only has a dozen titles, most of which are duplicated in other books published under my Punch Buggy Books account. I upload the books and purchase from the account wholesale.

Punch Buggy Books is handled by myself and my youngest son, who takes care of the money end while I do the publishing.

DarkEyedGirl books is owned by my beautiful niece, Jamie, who is publishing the second edition of the Sunset Saga, and who publishes anything that I think has a chance of selling or that requires and deserves graphic work.

Copyright is always under your name, even if you go with Random House, unless you are ghost writing or writing a work for hire, like the next Star Wars novel.

I no longer bother to send stuff to Paladin Press because it takes 18 months for them to put it out and I can do it in a day. Likewise, traditional publishing royalties range from 5-15% while Create Space gives me between 20 and 40%. Most authors will not be able to be published by large traditional houses for various reasons economic and cultural at the current time. I am among this group due to the nature of my content.

Dave, you can get published traditionally, but the royalties suck compared to what you can do on your own. Create Space is set up for distribution orders. I can call up my son and say, send Ishmael a copy of this and that, and he does it on his smart phone.

A traditional publisher wants between 3-7 books in the same series, as they don’t make money on new authors right off the bat, and will tie you down, typically, to a three book contract, which gets extended every time you fulfill your obligation to give them your next book and they accept.

This was once called vanity publishing and is a rip-off on many levels. Do not do this, even if you have the money. Create Space does also offer this service. This costs up to a grand and makes you maybe 50 bucks, and their editors rarely even speak English! Good luck getting corrections done.

People like Nine Banded Books, Hopeless Books, Counter-Currents and Mescaline Franklin’s Forever Autumn Press [who has published one of my books and will do at least two more] simply use POD providers like Create Space and split the royalties with you.

Set up an e-mail account.

Go to Create Space online and sign up.

You will have to fill out tax information so they can pay you and they will report royalties to the IRS.

You will now have your own “Member Dashboard,” where there is a button that says “add new title.”

Click on that and choose the “Guided” setting. Having done 70+ books, I use the “expert” setting and I’m a tech-tard, who did not learn how to use the Word tool bar until last year and 80% of it is still a mystery to me. If you can read, you are good to go.

To publish a book you need your word file and a PDF generated from that word file.

Pull up the word file so you can have it handy to cut and paste your title, subtitle and dustcover.

After you have copied and pasted your title and subtitle, chosen paperback, and browsed your PDF into the interior section, you will then use their cover creator system, which has you working through 9-12 boxes.

One of these boxes is for your publisher logo, which I leave blank as I can’t do graphics and don’t have a punch buggy logo.

The entire process is self explanatory. They do have a glitch in the BISAC Code process, which requires you to do it twice in order to get expanded distribution, which are other publisher sites around the world.

You will be given a minimum price, below which you cannot go. If you choose that you will make zero on expanded distribution sales.

David, you put bodies back together and teach in medical school, and Joseph, you have already produced a PDF. If this high school dropout, who can’t do long division to save his life, can do it, you can.

The book is your property, and does not get printed until someone buys one. You will basically be able to buy a copy at wholesale for the same margin that is your profit. So, I make $1.94 on When You’re Food and can buy myself a copy for that plus shipping and handling. The only reason why I started doing this was because generating manuscripts for my own reference of this same book cost me $25 in toner and paper!

When you buy a book of mine or your own you will know it is a Create Space book when you see the date and place where it was printed on the last page[it is usually a different printer as they have a rotation system that is not regional] making each book truly unique.

I suggest you provide your own cover art as their open domain stuff sucks. You must be certain that whatever image you use is at least 300 DPI or it will be rejected for the cover. Interior images can be less clear, if you wish.

Major publishers do not want to bother with anything that will not sell at least 5,000. Smaller publishers are dying like flies in October. The problem with self publishing is that you have no advertising, and that takes time. Now, a guy like Jack Donovan, who has written a handful of books, basically had to spend five years to sell a four thousand copies of The Way of Men, making scores of online and in-person promotional appearances. I’d rather fight, fuck, write or read, than spend my time doing that. An ugly little lizard like me, who sounds like Willie Nelson after a huge bong hit, does not bother with such things and contents himself with selling a fraction of what Jack sells.

Whatever you men decide, when you have a book ready to print, I will read it and give an advance review, and help you advertise through our site here. I certainly advise a web site for any author.

So Joseph, the only cost to you to publish a book is you buying it at wholesale.

David, with multiple books ready to publish, you might want to invent a publishing imprint and get a logo going. This makes brick and mortar book orders more likely and is how Create Space is set up, to service small publishers.

Good look guys and I look forward to reading both of your books. When I do, the review will appear in this space.

Oh yes, piss off a Modern Homo Sapien today, please.