Independent Publishing Best Practices - Offer Your Expertise!

In the spring of 2010, SPAN began to explore the idea of a certification process for independent publishers. This potential certification has become known as the Professional Independent Publisher Program, or simply: PIP.

Based on the discussions associated with the PIP program in SPAN's online community, the overall reaction to this program has been positive (For background information click to the Publisher Certification - PIP Group and browse the various discussions). In addition, these communications have indicated that any acceptable certification program would need to have potential influence in the publishing industry or market.

In analyzing this requirement, it became clear to us that the ability to influence the market depends on at least three fundamental concepts: knowledge of how the publishing industry works; identification of publishing goals; and the effective use of available tools to meet these goals. Further, we determined that these fundamental concepts all relate to a common denominator - the establishment of industry best practices.

Consequently, SPAN has decided to advance this certification process by soliciting your opinions. We have created a working index of Best Practices Discussions based on the various stages of the publishing process. Please review the list and click to the discussions that you want to participate in: PIP Input Criteria.

Utilizing the combined industry experience and collective brainpower of our members, along with the communication resources available in the SPANnet online community, we can generate ideas and build consensus about industry best practices.

Fundamentally, to the benefit of all SPAN members, these discussions will provide knowledge about how the publishing industry works, and insight into accessing the publishing market. Ultimately, we believe that this process will provide a foundation on which to build the PIP evaluation, promotion, and finally, a certification program that has potential influence in the publishing industry.

We look forward to your contributions to this process!

Tags: best, certification, criteria, independent, practices, professional, publisher, publishing, selfpublishing

Promote

1 member promoted this

Comment

You need to be a member of SPANnet - Self Publishing Information to add comments!

Join SPANnet - Self Publishing Information

Comment by Erica Manfred on July 2, 2011 at 10:37am: Oh, another best practice, and this has been discussed a lot on LinkedIn is that the publisher should be taking their profits UP FRONT from authors and not on the back end, i.e. you should pay for the services you need to publish the book and then own the ISBN and the profits."

Comment by Erica Manfred on July 2, 2011 at 10:36am: I posted on the ISBN thread that a best practice should be the author owning the ISBN and getting all the profits from the Kindle or ebook versions. I think author ownership of ISBN's will really separate the wheat from the chaff of vanity versus subsidy publishers. Also, there is no reason the program shouldn't recommend best practices for POD publishers, which right now includes LSI and Createspace and no others that I (or anyone else) knows of. SPAN has the power to hold the whole industry accountable to authors.

Comment by Bradley Flora on July 2, 2011 at 10:20am: Erica and Teresa,

Thank you both for your reply, and for helping to clarify my own position. I also agree with your respective positions, and was actually referencing more of a vanity press model then a subsidy press model when referencing "the path of least resistance".

I would also like to add that we have no plans to segregate based on which service is used to publish the book, as the criteria for certification, which we are currently establishing as a community, in our Best Practices discussion threads, will be based on what is best for a given publisher, not what is best for a 3rd party interest.

This means, in regard to this specific topic of publishing vs. subsidy vs. vanity models, that ownership of the ISBN will be an important consideration, because it is one of the steps in the publishing process that effect control of the final product.

In that regard, Theresa, I seem to recall you mentioning a strategy of not using ISBN's, maybe for a Kindle edition ebook? Am I remembering that correctly? And either way, if either of you, or anyone else reading this, for that matter, have some thoughts on Best Practices for ISBN or other Book Identifying numbers please consider sharing your thoughts here.

As you may have picked up, the program's development is still very flexible, and once I again, thank you both for your input because it is really helping us to craft this program in a way that is best for the independent publishing community.

Sincerely,

bradley flora

SPANnet.org

Comment by Theresa M. Moore on June 29, 2011 at 3:46pm: I agree with Erica. If you are going to segregate authors and publishers by what service they use or don't use, then your program will be irrelevent. The best practices should only apply to quality of writing, editing, layout, design, marketing and other aspects. Monitoring all publishing services should be confined to the issues of quality of service, not when and how books are delivered to the reading public.

Comment by Erica Manfred on June 29, 2011 at 3:10pm: Bradley, yes I do have a different perspective and I think I'm speaking for the vast majority of self pubbed authors who are primarily writers and don't want to get into the publishing business. I'm on a few forums on Linkedin where we discuss this and Createspace and LSI are deemed the best by all the experts. They don't take any rights, you can use your own ISBN, and the returns per book are very good. Other vanity presses are rip-offs. I think a program that establishes practices for subsidy presses, and helps authors distinguish the ripoffs from the good values would be extremely helpful to authors. But if you're going to leave out authors who use subsidy POD services to self publish you're going to be irrelevant.

Comment by Bradley Flora on June 29, 2011 at 2:34pm: Hi Erica,

In regard to your first question, right now we, as a community, are in the process of establishing all of the criteria that will be used in the program, through our Best Practices discussion threads.

Here at SPAN we chose to work as a collective because you're right, it is an complex and potentially confusing process. For example, you bring up a very good point of publishing rights, when asking about Createspace and LSI. Should we disallow publishing vectors such as that, and vanity press publishers, just because of their method of publication, or ownership of ISBN's, regardless of how good the book is?

I think that this question is a good one because you can create a quality book with quality editing, writing, typesetting, cover design, etc., through createspace, LSI, and iUniverse. However, you are giving up control of the book down the road, and as publishing best practice, I think it is a bit risky because you do want to keep those marketing and distribution options kept open as you proceed into the future. In terms of the development of the PIP program, I posted to the Identifier Best Practices thread, here, and shared my thoughts on ISBN ownership.

I think this particular question that you bring up merits allot more thought, because it is not entirely cut and dried. Right now, while I do feel that what the book looks like and reads like is more important then how it was published, we're talking about a program that helps publishers with the business aspect of book publishing too, and control of your own medium (the ISBN, etc.) is a huge part of that. An empowered publisher, is much more likely to be a successful publisher, and while the path of least resistance may be enticing for some publishers, or the only option that is ecomically feasible in the short run, it may not produce the biggest return in the long run. What do you think?

Beyond all that, we've certainly been looking at how this PIP program will fit into the world of publishing, as that world continues to evolve out from under our feet. Originally, the program's development was initiated as a way to combat the stigma of self-publishing for those authors and publishers who deserved more recognition.

Today, even with the ebook revolution that is occurring in publishing, I still believe that that goal is just as relevant as ever. Even as recently as January, it was looking like Independent Publishers could step through a digital back door, and find large scale success while circumventing the entire publishing industry. And while that's possible, and we're seeing cases that prove that point, I've also seen spammy publishers pushing books into the Amazon Kindle marketplace with no regard for quality, or the art of publishing a book. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2011/jun/26/kindle-ebooks-publ...

And lastly, I can see how this could all be confusing. It's a huge amount of information, and variables, for us to consider and parse, and if you find something specific that is confusing, let us know what it is. Our perspective is not your perspective, and we do appreciate any further thoughts you have that could help us clarify this program.

Thanks for your time in reading all that.

Sincerely,

bradley flora

SPANnet.org

Comment by Erica Manfred on June 29, 2011 at 12:20pm: I'm confused about this program. Would it apply to authors who publish through Createspace or LSI or even other companies, is it just for authors with their own companies? Also, there are a bunch of posts in April and then the thread died. I think PIP is too complicated. All the different criteria are too confusing and to difficult to judge.

Erica Manfred

askerica@gmail.com