Take control and publish your own chapbooks!

After yesterday’s extremely depressing post about the grim realities of being a writer, I thought I’d try to cheer things up by writing about ways you can create your own brand of success.

All of yesterday’s post concentrated on publishing through traditional channels – getting a contract with one of the large publishing houses and placing your faith in them that they will get your book out to the masses (and it will actually sell). But why place your faith in someone else? You wrote your book. You put your sweat and tears into it. And you’re the one who has the most invested into the book (monetary and otherwise). Why not take control and make your own success?

I’m talking about self-publishing, of course. Before I begin, however, I want to say that this term still has a negative stigma attached to it. But that stigma lies mostly in the traditional publishing world. The great thing is self-publishing doesn’t even have to involve paying a company lots of money to publish your book – it doesn’t have to be that complicated, or that expensive.

True Self-Publishing
A very popular form of self-publishing is called a chapbook. These are homemade booklets (they can range between 4-48 pages) that usually contain poetry. However, they are not limited to poetry – you can even make a chapbook with short fiction.

The great thing about chapbooks is that you make them yourself, so you have total control. In fact, many poets/writers get very creative with the way they put these together and the chapbook itself becomes a work of art. I’m not going to go into detail about how to make one, as there are plenty of websites already devoted to this very subject.

Give away for free, or sell?
So let’s assume that you put together a short poetry collection in the form of a chapbook. Now what? You have several options. One is to give them away to help promote yourself as a writer. Somewhere inside the chapbook should have your website (you do have a website?) so people know where to find more of your work – and even buy some of your other books, if you have them. Giving away free poetry has always been popular and the reaction is usually very positive.

Selling your chapbook
The next option is selling your chapbooks for a profit. Since you know how much it cost to make each book, you can easily set the price to what you think is fair. If your book is pretty basic without a lot of artistic detail, then expect the price to be a little lower. On the other hand, if the chapbook is itself a work of art (ie. hand painted cover, intricate stitching for the binding, etc), then each book will naturally command a higher price.

Where do you sell them? Anywhere! Historically, chapbooks were sold right on the street. But you can sell yours from your website, craft fairs, going door to door (although I wouldn’t recommend this method), out of the back of your car, and any other place people gather. Heck, you might even talk the local independent bookstore owner into carrying a few of your books to sell.

Benefits of chapbook publishing
The great thing about chapbooks is the sky is really the limit (or your imagination). Of course, you’re not going to get rich and/orfamous doing this. But you will have much more control over your work and if you sell your own chapbooks, you get to keep 100% of the profits (take that Random House!). To me, this type of publishing is much more satisfying because it’s completely hands on and you reap all the rewards. Whereas trying to get published through traditional methods involves lots of rejection, giving up control over your work, small royalty payments, and dealing with a bureaucratic corporation that doesn’t always have your best interest in mind.

The most important thing with chapbooks is to have fun. Take your time to write, design and put together something you can be proud of. And in the beginning, don’t print off hundreds of books. Maybe a dozen or so will do. Keep your costs as low as possible. In fact, a lot of people even number each chapbook and only print a maximum number of them, so each one is a "limited edition". But it’s all up to you.

If you have any experience publishing your own chapbooks, please enlighten the rest of us and leave a comment describing your experience. I personally have not done this, but I have one in the planning stages right now.

As always, thanks for reading!

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Read More: Poetry, Self-Publishing, Writing