The Value of Custom Publishing: Part I

Apr 17 2006

As you may have noticed, in addition to co-founding several companies, I’ve also been fortunate enough to have co-authored two really great books. My first, Drop Shipping For Dummies, was published by the Custom Publishing Division of John Wiley & Sons in early-2005; while my latest title, eBay Inventory The Smart Way (AMACOM Books), just came out a few weeks ago. One of the benefits to authoring, co-authoring, or contributing to a major book–or ‘custom publishing’ a book–is the exposure you get from having your name appear on the book’s cover. For an entrepreneur like myself, this means one thing and one thing only: credibility.

If there’s one thing all entrepreneurs need—aside from capital resources—it is credibility. When you walk into a meeting with potential investors, vendors, employees, or even reporters, and if they know ahead of time that you’ve authored a book—and not just any book, but a book directly related to your company’s primary reason for existing in the first place—chances are, you’ve already got their attention (and in a way, I might add, that an unpublished entrepreneur can not).

When Doba decided that it was time to educate the masses on drop shipping, we had a serious choice to make… spend thousands of hours and countless resources creating a book/manual of our own (or a similar amount of resources on an advertising marketing campaign aimed at a geographically diverse audience), or turn to a known entity like Wiley’s For Dummies brand for help. At the end of the day, we chose to enlist the support of Wiley’s Custom Publishing Division, which is different from the ‘Consumer’ For Dummies and ‘Technology’ For Dummies divisions. In no time at all, Wiley was able to work with my company on a customized version of the same For Dummies-branded books that you see everyday at bookstores all across the world. In a matter of months—buy choosing to pay 100 percent of the costs associated with our book ourselves—we were literally able to own Drop Shipping For Dummies.

From a practical standpoint, we couldn’t have made a better investment. Not only did we get to write the book’s content ourselves, but also we’re now able to leverage the For Dummies brand to our advantage. Think about that for a second: John Wiley & Sons–along with the brand’s previous owners, IDG Books and Hungry Minds–spent millions of dollars building the For Dummies brand, and with one phone call and some negotiating with a custom publishing rep, my company was able to attach itself to that same brand in a way that none of my competitors ever can. From the public’s point of view, the For Dummies brand–whether it appears on a customized book like ours or on one of the traditionally published For Dummies titles that appears in bookstores–means one thing: concepts & how-to simplified. What company wouldn’t want to attach itself to a leading brand like we did? Not many, I’m guessing.

So for all you entrepreneurs out there, especially those of you who are looking for credibility, consider Custom Publishing. In the weeks and months to come I’ll share more about my experience with authoring custom published books and working with the likes of the John Wiley & Sons of this world. It’s not a cheap or easy-way-out proposition (not by a long shot), but if you plan your work and work your plan, who knows, maybe you won’t be considered a dummy either!

Update: Based on one of the comments I received to this posting, I want to clarify one thing. ‘Custom’ Publishing is very different from the traditional publishing model. If you wanted to author a For Dummies book, and you wanted your book to be sold at bookstores nationwide, you’d need to go through the traditional channels. Meaning, you’d need to hire a literary agent, and your agent would pitch your idea to a For Dummies acquisitions editor. The acquisitions editor–in consultation with the acquisitions director and publisher and sales team–would evaluate your idea, and if they liked it enough, make you an offer–advance/royalties–to write the book. With Custom Publishing–at least at John Wiley & Sons–you bypass the ‘acquisitions’ process altogether, and what’s delivered to you at the end of the day is a customized–usually smaller both in trim size and page count–version of the traditionally published For Dummies book. The big differences of course being that you pay 100 percent of the cost of the Custom published product, and however many copies of the book are produced/ordered, you take possession of them yourself for distribution as you see fit. Customized For Dummies titles like ours never see their way into the bookstores. We’re using Drop Shipping For Dummies as a premium or as a value-added giveaway, if you will.

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View Comments Filed under Publishing
  • Thanks for the update. Wow! You are able to "buy" the credibility that "For Dummies" brings to the market (sounds kind of oxymoronic when you think about it). Thanks again for the post and the update--this was very enlightening.
  • I agree with you. Credibility is a powerful force for any entrepreneur. Without it, people have no reason to believe or trust you.

    Many people mistake a graduate degree as something that will give them credibility. But, although a degree is valuable, from the viewpoint of a consumer degrees mean nothing. Afterall, anybody can get one. Anybody that has spent anytime in college knows somebody that wasted their days slacking off smoking pot and drinking beer, and yet they still got their masters or doctorate, paid for by their rich daddy.

    But publishing a book... how many people have actually done that? Doesn't really matter. What matters is that the public perceives it as a great accomplishment that only a few elite have done.
  • Intriguing post. It sounds like with the "For Dummies" series that you don't have to go through the normal "hoops" of selling a transcript to the publisher. Rather, you simply come up with an area of expertise, pitch it, and if you get the rights then you write the book? Interesting if that is the case.

    How does the actual printing work? Is this more like a self-published work or what? Also, I thought you were giving the book away (though as I look now, I don't see the link for the book on your blog). I suppose this is a cost of doing business and the credibility factor as you stated in this post is the "ROI"??

    Thanks for sharing.
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