What is the process of distributing a book?

[Rynbow]

I am planning to self-publish. The mechanics of design and printing do not hold any concerns for me, but distribution to agencies is critical and maybe difficult. Can anybody advise me on how to go about this?

[akaMaryn]

Rynbow, once you have paid to publish, agencies will not deal with you. They make their money by taking a fixed percentage of what publishers pay authors, and no publisher will be paying you.

Distribution and marketing a self-published book is quite difficult, especially for fiction. Self-published books do poorly on ebay, amazon, the publisher’s website, and the author’s own website.

Many of the avenues open to traditionally published authors are not available. Chain bookstores won't host signings or carry copies (although they will order them for customers who ask for it). Newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio don't want your press releases and won't do interviews. The library system won't accept free copies. Writing- or book-related conventions won’t let you set up a sales or autograph table, don’t want you on their author panels, and forbid you giving away promotional material.

The author's blog, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, and other electronic self-promotion efforts seem to have little effect in terms of increased sales.

About the only marketing I've seen have any effect for self-published authors is active participation at forums and chats dealing with the subject of your book. Find your niche market and determine where online they hang out. Some sites may allow you to discuss your book *if someone asks about it* (but will ban you for bringing it up more than once). Some may allow a link to a point of sale in your profile, or to your blog or web-page which in turn links to a point of sale.

You'll sell a few more copies than you might have, but overall, like most self-published books, regardless of quality, total sales will probably remain below 100 copies. More often, the number hovers somewhere around 2/3 to 3/4 of your total number of friends and family members. This compares pretty unfavorably to the thousands of copies a moderately-selling book from a conventional publisher can anticipate.

The one exception appears to be non-fiction with an existing niche market into which the author can tap at little or no cost. If, for instance, there's a newsletter about subject X, and you self-publish a book about X, you can no doubt buy an ad for it in the newsletter. But this might get you dozens of sales, not hundreds, and certainly not thousands.