Why Publish Your Writing In A Printed Book?
- Posted by Essays Blog in Essays Blog |
- October 9th, 2008 |
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Why would anyone deprivation to create a printed book, when so can create eBooks a lot more easily — and cheaply? Why would anyone deprivation to get mired in the process of printing and shipping physical books that accept time to deliver to customers, when they can deliver a digital information product immediately, with no additional production or shipping costs? What’s the point of having a tree-killing artifact of yesteryear in your creative portfolio?
Advantageously, like it or not, a lot of people allay prefer printed books to eBooks. They like — no, they love — the feel of a printed copy in their hands. It gives them a meaning of eudaemonia and consistency, to have a physical activity they can carry with them and put on their bookshelves. They’re “old school” and they like it that artifact. Or, they just never warmed capable eBooks or digital media.
I had a conversation with an international receiver reporter about one of my books that was coming out presently — I didn’t yet have the printed variant in my hands, but I had a PDF eBook I could send him. He said many times over that he hated to read eBooks, but that was all I had at the time, and so I conveyed it to him. It would have been a entire lot better if I could have conveyed him a printed copy, instead. Of course, I made do with what I had, but if only…
Now, thither’s a real good reason any people like printed books better than eBooks — they can read them anywhere, anytime, without needing a computer to do it. For all the talk about “portable media,” these days, a book is really the crowning in portable media! It fits in your hand, it doesn’t require batteries, and thither are no complicated instructions to figure out! As advanced as our application may be, thither’s nothing like a book to truly “carry information” quickly and efficiently, across the bounds of time and area.
Ironic, isn’t it, that the crowning medium for portable, instantaneous information distribution is just the abstraction that a lot of us cerebration was on its exit, with the advent of the internet!
Books are not “reserved” for the technologically gifted. They’re not available only to people with a computer and a broadband connection. They’re easy to consume, easy to carry, and — different any of the cutting-edge entertainment application available today — everybody understands what they’re all about.
When you publish a printed book, you level the playing field for potential customers, and you make it possible for a wider difference of people to access and enjoy your activity.
Another reason to create a printed book, is for credibility. With a printed book in hand — especially one with an ISBN — you can approach magazines and newspapers and radio and receiver hosts and have something in hand to talk about with them. You can mail your book to reviewers and reporters, and you can hold up your creation for the camera, when it comes time to tell the audience what all the excitement is about. And when members of your audience go to their local bookstore to accompany if they carry your book (depending on what service you consume to publish your book), they can put in a request for the book from the bookstore, and potentially help you get it stocked on the bookshelf stores. (Tho’ you may already be convinced, like many other infopreneurs, that bookstores are not the place to sell books, allay, it doesn’t hurt to accompany your book on the shelves of a brick-and-mortar fund.)
Probably my favorite reason to publish in print, is how it can accept your ideas to a entire new level and get you the kind of exposure once reserved only for the connected elite. Having a book in print has a artifact of instantly establishing you as an expert, in distance that producing (even getting rich from) digital information products can’t, in the “real class” offline. When people hear you’ve written a book, and they accompany that book in your hands, a connection kicks in, someplace inside their heads, that says you must be pretty astute. Chances are, it’s accurate — you are! But the perception of others that you must be one astute cookie, since you’ve written this book, unremarkably doesn’t get so as to delve into the nature of your book, if it’s any “good,” or if your activity is wide accepted and respected in academic or commercial circles.
Everyday folks have an innate respect for people who can expense enough coherent cerebration, and organize it completely enough, to produce a book. An awful lot of people never get that far. Any may entertain it, but never do it. As a published author, as far as a lot of folks are concerned, you’re in a league of your own. And that’s a pretty good feeling!
I’ve gotten a bit of practice having that feeling. To my friends and family, I’m “just Kay” and that’s fine with me. All that fame business just kind of gets in the artifact, when it comes to my personal relationships. But to people who read the international press in the areas I publish in (application and cross-cultural concerns), I have a fairly different persona — I’m a published author who has caught the attention of folks from Asia and Europe with a controversial and rabble-rousing activity that hit the presses in the fall of 2006. It’s pretty cool, to come across people from far away, who have read reviews of my books in magazines and newspapers I’ve never heard of. And I’ve got any pretty cool clippings of articles that mention me — and my book — exclusively, or in passing. That was all possible, because I published a printed book. It doesn’t matter that I have eBook versions of my works available for instant download. Most of the time, that’s not even on the radar of the mainstream international press. In fact, if anything, they kind of activity up their noses when I mention my eBook. But my printed variant of that same book… advantageously, that’s another account.
Publishing a printed book widens the reach of your ideas in distance that digital media can’t quite do. You open up your ideas to a entire different audience, and you get the chance to make even more of an impact with your concepts and your single “accept” on the class… action a position of accurate cerebration leadership in a hurting class that’s painfully in need of fresh, new ideas. In fact, now is really the perfect time to be stepping out as a innovative new author in the print publishing class. The old formulas and the old distance of perception the class and talking about it and conceptualizing it and relating thereto, are pretty beat and dog-tired. We need fresh new ideas, brilliant new insights, and innovative distance of cerebration about our class. You may have distilled everything you know and popped it into an eBook, but the print class offers you yet another medium (or “channel,” if you prefer marketing lingo) for your ideas.
My favorite reason of all for publishing a printed book, is the profound spirit that comes from holding a real, honest-to-goodness concrete book in your hands. I’ve been a book reader for over 30 years, and I’ve never lost my love for the compass of words on a printed page. All the better, when those words are mine! Any would call it pride, but I call it doing my talents justice… and having something to appear for all my activity, all those live-long years of writing, writing, and writing any more, against all odds, hope against hope. I’m a real tactile person, when it comes to words, also, so I like to have something to hang onto. Digital is great — it’s my medium of choice, these days — but I can’t flip finished the pages of a PDF quite the same artifact I can finger finished a book.
It really is an incredibly exciting time to be a writer and independent publisher! I’m so deeply grateful to have been born at this point in history, with my love of language and books — and the ability to put that love into manifest product. The possibilities really are endless… provided, of course, you know how to explore them. And that’s what this guide is about — getting you, an infopreneur or digital product creator, the tools and the skills and the orientation you need, to activity your digital content into print format, so you can reach a wider audience and more firmly establish yourself in your own niche of cerebration leadership.