What had been holding up bringing out Arizona Sunset, which has been finished for some time, had been the question of whether we should also do a paperback version. I went back and forth as to the value or not of doing this. Asking western romance authors at MOA, I got some good advice which decided me on the paper versions and maybe not just the historicals yet to be published but also my contemporaries already out as eBooks.
Farm Boss is my publisher with Seven Oaks Publishing, and he's the one who has been working on the process of creating a paperback through CreateSpace which has the advantage of being connected to Amazon as well as the writer's cost only being the books you yourself buy. There are rules that go along with it for instance the price you put on the book for Amazon has to be the price a bookstore is supposed to sell it. I am not sure how special, occasional sales work into this.
The cover above is what I originally intended for the eBook but it had to be reversed once we decided on the paperback for the spline to work with the cover and it being easier to combine with the sunset and rock rather than her skirt. Details but they are the kind of thing with which you will wrestle if you put out a paperback.
The drawback obviously is not money since there is no real cost involved if you can do your own work. CreateSpace does offer the service for those who want that for a fee but they then reserve some rights. Better to work it out myself. We also bought our own ISBN (ten of them as the package is cheaper which means we will have ten paperbacks sooner than later). After getting the prototype, there is no further cost unless I want to give some away or try to take them to some indie bookstores to see if they have interest in selling them on consignment. However, I've gone through the hassle of that when I stepped in to help a group of women in my rural community with selling the cookbook they had self-published. It's a lot of work is what I learned. Even though I did get most of their books sold, I vowed I'd not do such a thing again. Never say never though.
The following is a good article on why eBook writers should also do a paperback.
Unfortunately it, and I've seen reference to this other places, brought up another question-- what about audio books...
