Working on a dream - self-publishing in Malaysia

 This article may be freely reprinted as long as the bio is included.

Since publication of The Banana Leaf Men, I have been asked the same question many times, “How much did it cost?” Also, I’ve been asked to share my know-how about the publishing industry here in Malaysia, the most recent being a request from Sharanya Manivannan. She is mulling over some of the options open to her for her work Witchcraft. Here’s a gist of her thoughts and concerns:

I’m impressed that Sharanya has considered all of this in such detail. I must admit that when I thought of publishing The Banana Leaf Men, I never thought about half of what she thought. My main aim was to get the book published and I was at a stage in my life where the last thing I wanted was for someone to tell me what worked and what didn’t.

Let me then assist by sharing my own experiences and know how. First, I’ll set some parameters, namely:

• I’ll only consider self-publishing and not print on demand as I don’t know about this form of publication.

• What I say is based solely on my own experiences. Others may have things to add or disagree with what I’ve done.

• My experiences, to date, are restricted to publishing within Malaysia.

• The book I’ll refer to, when illustrating a point will be The Banana Leaf Men.

There are three specific stages to creating a book, namely:

• Writing the manuscript

• Converting the manuscript into a published work

• Distributing the published work

1. Writing the manuscript

The number of courses which teach creative writing or any form of writing are now innumerable. On my site, I’ve interviewed many people from those who have been students of writing courses (Noel Gama) to people who offer courses (Nick Daws) to publishers (Philip Tatham) to editors (Kathy Ide and Michael LaRocca) and so on. It is up to an individual person to do the research about such courses and find which one fits you. I’ve got a whole section on Resources for Storytellers on the site for someone who’d like some help. Personally, I’ve found that you can learn and learn and learn and learn about writing but in the end, you’ve got to write that story down. Many aspiring writers I’ve met are too scared to write down their stories for fear of being criticised. However, if there’s one thing I’ve learnt, there’s no better way to improve your writing than to be criticised … constructively, I might add. If you’d like to read about how someone should properly approach the task of reviewing a work, then click here.

2. Converting the manuscript into a published work

If you self-publish, one of the things you’ll be grateful for is that in Malaysia, obtaining an ISBN is easy and free. It can be done over the net and is delivered within a week.

The catch is this: once you assume the responsibility of self-publishing, you also assume some legal responsibilities like having to give 5 copies (I think) of this book to the National Library and so on.

Sharanya asks this : … do you know of presses willing to see pdfs or Word attachments of the completed manuscript?

I’m not sure about PDF files and can only comment on Word Documents. The process is simple – you hand over a completed work in Word Document to someone who will typeset it for you. The typesetting will be done using software like Adobe PageMaker.

The problem here can sometimes be that when the typesetting is done, lines can go missing, words are misspelled and so on. Therefore, just because you’ve had your manuscript carefully proof-read does not mean that when it’s typeset, it’ll all be OK. The proof-reading needs to be done all over again.

Next, you have to consider what kind of paper to use, what fonts to use, the cover design which you think will appeal to your readers and best represents your work and all sorts of other details. The thing is, just because you used Times New Roman to type your manuscript does not necessarily mean that the printer can do this.

After this is done, then there is something called ‘Computer to Plate’ – I’m not too sure about this but I think it’s this: all of the work done on Adobe PageMaker will now have to be ‘transferred’ to plates, which will be the mechanism used to print the requisite number of copies of the book.

As for the cost, well, these are the things you’ve got to take account of:

• Size – it can be any size you wish but what you need to remember is that if it’s an odd size, then paper will be wasted. If you choose standard sizes, the paper will be cut in a standard manner and therefore there’ll be less wastage and no doubt, cheaper.

• Pages – number of pages matter. In The Banana Leaf Men, you’ll note that there are spaces between paragraphs. This ‘error in formatting’ never occurred to me until much later when a publisher pointed it out. If you look at most books, you’ll see that there are no spaces between paragraphs. Sometimes, the need for a blank page between chapters is also done away with. The reason is again savings – the lesser number of pages in a book means when published in huge quantities can mean savings of up to thousands of dollars.

• Paper – what paper would you like to use – recycled paper (more expensive), slightly brown paper (which becomes yellow very fast) or white paper.

• Colour – the amount of colours used for the cover design and text also affects the cost of the whole thing.

• Finish – do you want gloss finish or matt finish?

• Binding – what kind of binding do you want – a perfect bind or one where the pages are sewn together?

• Quantity – naturally, the more you order, the cheaper it becomes. However, if you have 3000 books, do you have a place to store them should you not be able to sell them?

• Fixing the retail price of books. A unit price for a basic novel may be something like RM5.00. The standard in publishing terms is that the retail price will be 9 times the unit price. This makes the ideal retail price of the book RM45.00. The question to ask is this: in this present publishing climate, are people likely pay RM45.00 for a locally published book?

3. Distributing the published work

Imagine this: You hold in your hands that bound, new copy of your latest work. That warm feeling that you’ve realised your dream fills you with such joy. Then, you turn your head and you see 2,000 copies of your book by the side wall and you wonder just how on earth you’re going to get all of them out there.

One of the foremost bookshops to go to is MPH bookstores – simple because they have 42 outlets in Peninsular Malaysia alone. However, if you were to approach MPH and ask them if they’ll stock your books, you’re sure to be turned away. They’d rather deal with distributors and not authors direct and really, when you think about it, you’ll understand why.

• Firstly, there are so many outlets for each chain of bookstores – are you prepared to go to each and every one of them to deliver these books? Have you got the energy and resources to do this?

• Secondly, bookshops do not pay you immediately. They can take up to 8 months to pay you. Even then, when they do pay, they’re quite likely to return books to you – ones that are damaged or even those that have not been sold.

• Thirdly, you’re solely responsible for all the accounting – bookstores expect you to understand Purchase Orders, Invoices, Delivery Orders, Credit Notes and so on.

If you’re considering approaching a distributor, the best person to ask about whom to approach is the bookstore itself. They’ll tell you whom they use. The percentage that you’re willing to give the distributor is entirely up to negotiations between you and the distributor.

If you’re thinking, “OK. Forget the big bookstores. I’ll have my books sold in small and quaint bookshops,” then there is the issue of books being sold on consignment. I’ve given books on consignment to some bookstores and now, after years, I’ve still not seen the money or even the books!

Now marketing is a whole different ball-game. You’ve got this book, MPH is holding a ‘Meet the Author’ session and you’re all geared up. You tell everyone you know, you send out the emails, inform the media and you know what? No one turns up. Why? Not because they do not wish to show you support or that your work is of inferior quality but, honestly, “who wants to go all the way to MPH Megamall on a Saturday afternoon just to see and hear a local author speak?” I won’t even answer that question.

Conclusion

Reading all I’ve written, I seem to have painted a gloomy picture of self-publishing. But, as I said, the reason I self-published The Banana Leaf Men was because at that time, I just could not have taken it had some person in a publishing company said I couldn’t do this or I had to do that. I had some very personal reasons and the sense of absolute control over my own project and dream is something I treasure. I learned about the writing and publishing industry (at least the local one) from the inside and when someone wanted to ‘cruelly torment’ me by saying that I’d paid some RM2,000.00 for publishing this work, all I could do was laugh at such foolish ignorance.

Ultimately, a person has to decide what he or she wants and has to stand by that decision no matter what. If it’s your dream, it’s yours. It’s up to you to make it happen and as many of the self-help gurus say, “If you’re working on your dream, it’s working on you.”