by
Jerry Payne
September 1, 2020
Exciting news, folks. Over the course of the last several years, many of my clients have asked me to help walk them through the tricky process of self-publishing. I don’t mind admitting that I’ve become rather adept at it and lately it occurred to me to officially add that service onto what I already do for my ghostwriting clients. And at a minimal, flat-rate, all-inclusive fee.
I confess that part of this is selfishness. On a few occasions, I’ve written what I believed to be a great book only to see my client: 1) sit on the manuscript and do nothing with it at all, 2) go through one of the many less-than-legitimate “vanity” publishing companies that end up making too many promises for too much money, or 3) try to self-publish the book him or herself only to bollix up the whole thing and end up with an amateurish-looking final product.
Any one of these outcomes is frustrating. I know, I know…in each case I’m paid to write the book and so once the writing is done, what right do I have to complain about what the client does with it? It’s the client’s property, after all. Heck, my name isn’t even on it. The thing is, after spending months working on a book, you simply can’t help but take a sincere interest in what happens with it. You work hard on something and even if you’ve been well-paid and now technically out of the picture, you’d like to see it succeed. I imagine most ghostwriters are like this.
So anyway, I’ve decided to offer self-publishing services to my clients. It’s my new soup-to-nuts approach. I can take a book idea from concept all the way to print. A one-stop shop, if you will.
Now, that doesn’t mean a client can’t opt to go another direction with the publishing. There are no obligations to use my services. I’m just going to offer it with the hope that clients will take advantage of it. That way, I can be assured that the final product will be polished and professional.
What does it mean to add self-publishing? It means that I’ll manage the design of the cover and the interior formatting, secure the copyright, set the client up with his or her own personal account with IngramSpark (the world’s largest book distribution company), and do all the legwork necessary to get the book listed on Amazon and made available through all the major book resellers. Plus, I’ll provide an ebook version. I’ll even throw in 25 printed copies for free. And then I’ll remain in a consultative capacity to go over marketing ideas and show the client how to track sales.
Soup to nuts. Wish I’d have thought of it earlier, but better late than never, I suppose. If you want to learn more, here are some further details.