Authors and Self-Publishing

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I went to cafepress and did some math. A 300 page book would cost 16 bucks if sold as a print on demand book. This means that the authors of a close to 300 page book like Professional Nolimit Holdem could make 14 bucks per 30 dollar copy.

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I haven't checked your numbers, but I'm willing to stipulate to them for the sake of argument.

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My guess is that they probably make 3 bucks per copy being published by two plus two. My question is, why don't the poker authors just self-publish as print on demand on cafepress or lulu? Even if they sell less copies they make much more per copy.

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My understanding is that 2+2 authors get more than 10% of the gross sales price of each book. I don't have the numbers, but Mason has been quite proud of how much his authors get per book sale. A $3/copy royalty rate for a $30 book isn't a horrible estimate for many publishers, though.

The other issue is, of course, that a publisher does much more for an author than just take a Word document and create bound books. Here are some of the services a publisher provides:

Marketing
Connections to distributors who get the books to book stores
Copy editing (for self-published books you can either do this yourself, which I don't recommend, or pay someone to do this for you.)
Professional layout work
Provide cover art
Provide internal art

Also, good publishing companies, such as the Pearson imprints or O'Reilly for technical books, or 2+2 or ConJelCo in the poker world, can enhance sales because of the reputation of the publisher.

If you self-publish a book, you have to worry about a lot of things that a publisher takes care of for you. These things take time, which could be used writing a next book.

If you're a well-known poker name, then you can probably sell a self-published book. If you're not a known name, it's difficult to jump-start sales, even if your book is very good. Having a publisher can really help get initial market penetration.

For most big-name poker players who write poker books, I'm guessing the income from the book as a function of the time spent on the project is low on the list of reasons to write the book in the first place, so spending additional time on issues that a publisher can take care of in order to earn extra money at the potential cost of breadth of distribution probably does not seem beneficial.

Whether one self-publishes or not, very few people in the poker world make the majority of their income as a poker book author. I suspect that for most poker authors the books they write are a means more than an end. For these people, optimizing income from each book is secondary.

As a book reviewer, I have to say that the vast majority of self-published gambling books are crap. (A prominent exception to this are Bob Ciaffone's books, which are generally excellent.) Most of these are self-published because no sane publisher would put them out. The reputation self-published books hurts their sales over and above distribution problems. Authors with sufficiently good reputations can mitigate this, again, I'd hold up Ciaffone as an example.

Hope this provides some indication as to why most poker authors prefer to work with a publisher rather than self-publish books.