As a small scale publisher, what should you do for yourself and what should you pay someone else to do?
That is a common question, and someone on a publishing email list rightly commented that it always seemed that the "experts" were saying that the newbie should get everything done (at a fee) by someone in the industry.
There is nothing wrong with anyone learning to do everything for themselves -- I even did a course in paper making because I thought it might help me understand the most basic of the raw materials we deal with, and it did.
The problem is that too many people are misled by the promises of people that everything is easy.
If someone...
- studies the book market,
- spends time not only reading the books on the subject (and most can be found in public libraries so you need only to eventually buy the ones which are going to be essential to you),
- talks to everyone in the industry (I've learned a lot from a bloke whose house I walk past into town who is a forklift driver for a major printer who seems similarly interested in learning more about the products he hauls around),
- is prepared to do the job (for example the layout) and then to look at it critically and do it again (I nearly sent a printing business broke when I looked at a book we'd produced as I handed the first copies to the customer, and then said "it's not good enough, is it" and we did it again, but we grew into a much stronger company),
then that someone can match everything the experts can do. It's not brain surgery -- you can practice without doing too much harm to anyone but yourself.
BUT, someone who says, I've never done a book before but I have Word (or I've just bought InDesign) and then, with a printed copy in hand, looks at finding a distributor or for someone who will tell how to get publicity for it.
I'm all for people doing things for themselves. I tend to run a mile from anyone who adopts the description of "consultant", and I like the description of expert as "ex", a has-been, and "spurt", a drip under pressure.
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