By Lynn G. Coleman
Self-publishing: Is It Worth It? You Decide
By Lynn G. Coleman
"If I died and went to hell, they’d make me self-publish there," a reference librarian told Mary Edsey halfway through her own self-publishing odyssey. Edsey, author of The Best Christmas Decorations in Chicagoland, mesmerized attendees of the IWPA’s November Book Fair with her "behind-the-scenes drama" of self-publishing.
You’re basically doing the work of an entire company, she said. By publishing her own book, Edsey became the author, publisher, production manager, designer, warehouse manager, fulfillment manager, and marketer.
Edsey took 85% of the pictures in her book during a five-year period, going out every night during the Christmas season from dusk to 1:00 a.m. She also interviewed the homeowners and wrote all the copy. When six publishers rejected her book, Edsey started her company, Tabagio Press, taking the name from a popular childhood game: "Mrs. S claps once, whirls about, tabagio." To pay the $56,000 for the initial printing, she took out a second mortgage on her house and borrowed from everyone she knew.
Production Woes
"Don’t start production until the book is written," Edsey advises. She did and ended up pushing the print date back until she lost her window of opportunity for a Christmas book. When she finally decided to wait another year, Edsey said she felt "like a bride canceling her wedding."
When the next year’s deadline rolled around, Edsey had completely rewritten the book because the writing at the end was so much better than it was at the beginning when she was a bit reticent about intruding on people’s lives. Edsey’s typesetter had a nervous breakdown (literally) and disappeared, leaving her with some major color-correction problems.
The printer wanted to deliver the books a day early and, at first, Edsey couldn’t find any warehouse space. When she finally did, the trucks couldn’t reach the warehouse because they were too large to fit under the viaducts.
Edsey hired a distributor to sell her book to the large chain bookstores, but hand-delivered copies to smaller bookstores that failed to respond to her letters. When orders started coming in for the book, she realized she had no system in place to handle them and talked all her friends and relatives into taking and filling the orders.
After landing an appearance on a radio show, 34 bookstores sold out of her book in one day, but the distributor refused to let Edsey drop ship. A TV news station ran a different picture from her book every day in December. The only problem was that the station wouldn’t identify the book or its author until four days before Christmas.
Despite all her trials, Edsey became a successful book publisher and now teaches courses in self-publishing, provides consulting and production services, and conducts bus tours of her winter wonderland during the holiday season. She is also the founder and president of Chicagoland Self-Publishers. ¦
