Hard Lessons (part two)

[Andrew John Standish]

Talk about a learning curve! Having finally navigated through the technical aspects of printing and distribution I've finally managed to make Volume 1 of "A Chronicle of the Psychodialetical Universe" available through bookshops and online stores. But there have been a few hitches along the way, the biggest problem was getting an accurate listing on Pub Web (the basic industry tool to provide information to booksellers), its free if you have an ISBN allocation but only allows the cover art, title, price, genre, ISBN, distributor and author name to be shown. If you want an author biography and synopsis you have to pay to join the enhanced listing service. My problem was it wasn't allowing me to edit the listing to show the revised price and publication date, so WH Smith and various other stores are showing a higher retail price and later publication date than is accurate. Also the cover art, which I had to add later (the ISBN authority Nielson lists your first publication for you and you have to amend their listing when your Pub Web membership details come through) was missing. Luckily Pub Web sends out their data base to the book trade monthly so these inaccuracies will be amended when the stores load in the new database next month. I'll not get caught out next time though because from now on I have the facility to load new title information myself. I guess it's a blessing that the shelf life of a book is longer than the single month of a traditional comic-book or these errors would have been fatal.
So, the next step is to get the message out to folks that the book is ready and available, its still early days but I've done a few ads with Google and a couple on Facebook, one ad links to the books Facebook fan page, one to its Amazon sales page and one focused on the American market to the IndyPlanet print on demand edition's page. The ads were relatively inexpensive and even if they don't result in direct sales at least publicises the work. I'm working on a competition for the Facebook fan page with prizes of merchandise from the Psychodialetical shop and eventually I'll get around to focusing on the traditional comic-book fan market...that'll be phase two! I'm seeing this property as a long term commitment and the more I write about the Psychodialetical Universe the more it reveals to me it's wonders and mysteries, there are lots of stories to tell and I'm having a blast telling them!

[Andrew John Standish]

Great! Wish I had that journalistic knack. Thanks John!

[John Freeman]

Cool: http://downthetubescomics.blogspot.com/2009/06/hard-lessons-in-self-publishing.html. Hope I haven't taken too many liberties!

[Andrew John Standish]

No, I'd be delighted, go ahead.

[John Freeman]

Would you mind if I re-posted this and your earlier post in an edited version on the downthetubes blog?

[Andrew John Standish]

Thanks John, I'm hoping people can learn from my mistakes and boy have I made some!

[John Freeman]

This is really interesting info Andrew - thanks for sharing.