Joe Pulizzi talks with Simon Owens about what creators should consider when they decide to write a book:
Yes, absolutely. So, you can print two copies, or 200 copies. And really, what they’re trying to push is, don’t necessarily send all your fans to Amazon.
That’s what mo— and I’ve done that for years, right? I’m a McGraw-Hill and self-publisher and I would say, ‘Great. I’ll put it on Amazon, I’ll send everybody there and I’ll get a buck a copy, and it’ll be great.
And then, as I’m talking with Lulu it’s like, ‘Hey, you know you could send them— so you’ve got 250,000 people that follow you on LinkedIn. Why are you gonna send them to Amazon, where they get all the money and they get all the data? Why don’t you send them to your website,
- have them buy directly from you,
- the package can come from you,
- you can set whatever price point you want
- and you get all their information?’
And I’m like, ‘Can you do that? Is that a thing?’
And so, as I’m learning more about book publishing— and I’ve always talked about— like, I’ve always been this big believer in, ‘Don’t build your house on rented land.’
You know, it’s— if you build your house on Facebook’s property, they can do whatever they want. They can cut you off at any moment.
X, you know, Elon and X could cut you off at any moment. Same with YouTube, whatever.
And, I didn’t think about it with the book publishing process, but now that I’m learning about it, that’s why we were on the same page with this whole thing.
And they’re like, ‘We’re trying to teach this to content entrepreneurs so they don’t just say, ‘Hey! You you can give Amazon more money, and even more of your data!’
And so, that’s what we’re really trying to teach with this, and this year we have a publishing track to do a lot of that.
Simon:
Are— does it also do digital products like Gum Road with like, you could do e-books and stuff like that, or is it just like a physical product type of company?
Joe:
So, right now, Lulu’s focusing on print demand books, and in the future we’re gonna focus on e-books and audiobooks.
But, right now, it’s basically just trying to talk to the author-content entrepreneur and say, ‘Instead of just automatically uploading your thing to Amazon, let’s— let’s go ahead
- put this on your website,
- send your fans and your subscribers to your website,
- set whatever price you want for your book, and
- take that— in that data.
Make— so make more money, get that data, take more control of your business model, and go that direction.’
Self-publishing straight from your website is worth strongly considering, as Joe mentions. Just like the rest of Big Social, Amazon entice you with the convenience of pushbutton publishing.
Author-creators who take the bait instantly agree to give away all the moneymaking data coming in from all of their fans (along with a sizable chunk of sales) to Amazon.
100-percent self-publishing from your own website (your own platform) requires a few more steps, but the upside is infinitely worth it, in most cases.
— Tang
Joe Pulizzi’s owned platform is: JoePulizzi.com.
Simon Owens owned platform include: SimonOwens.net and The Business of Content podcast.
