Back in February, I got involved in a kerfuffle kicked off by a Los Angeles writer named Lee Goldberg. In the post, Goldberg launched a pretty savage attack on Yvonne DiVita, who happens to be my book agent. Yvonne represented Neville and me with “How to Do Everything with Podcasting,” and she’s representing John C. Havens and me with the upcoming book, “Practical Transparency.” She’s also a prolific blogger. We first met at the first New Communications Forum in 2005.

Yvonne also has a business helping people produce books using a process called Print On Demand, or POD. Remarkable advances in printing technology have enabled POD, which makes it economical to print as few as a single copy of a book. The contents, cover and all, are stored digitally. When an order comes in, only the number of copies required to fill the order is printed. The printing quality is as good as anything you get from mainstream publishers.

Authors seeking to publish using POD can do everything on their own. But if they want help, Yvonne and her POD colleagues have businesses that can help with things like cover design. Yvonne wrote a post for a publishing industry blog, “Beneath the Cover,” that explained what POD is and isn’t. It was that post—POD Myths Dispelled -??? Get the Scoop Here!”—that led to Goldberg’s rant.

I had my say in the comments section and put it out of my mind. But I just found a more recent Goldberg post that comes from the same viewpoint. I am motivated, as a result, to get a couple points off my chest.

POD is not the vanity press

Goldberg doesn’t acknowledge any difference between POD and the old vanity press. Let’s be clear: They are not the same. Vanity publishers publish books at the author’s expense. The key here is the word “publish.” The economics of vanity publishing require a minimum press run (the number 500 sticks in my mind from some conversations about vanity publishing a few years ago). The author pays for the print run and, consequently, winds up with several hundred books that will never sell. Most of the authors willing to cough up the kind of money to produce 500 copies usually shopped their manuscript, got no nibbles, but just had to see their names on the cover of a book. It’s called “vanity” for a reason.

POD, on the other hand, is being used for a vast number of purposes other than feeding a bad writer’s vanity. Here are just a few:

• A photographer friend has introduced me to the replacement for the wedding (or bar mitzvah or confirmation or anniversary party) photo album. Before POD, customers bought prints and put them in thick books bought at stationery stores, stuck to pages under plastic covers. Now, the album is printed like a real book and copies can be given to any friend or relative as a keepsake. In fact, people are publishing photos of their babies’ first year, their vacations, just about anything that once would have led to a bulging album.
• I wrote a few weeks back about a company publishing the first draft of its annual report using POD instead of the old blueline, a one-tone print produced directly from a negative, not unlike printing a photo from a negative. By using POD, the annual report team is able to show management exactly what the finished product will look like, for about the same price.
• At online POD company Blurb, you’ll find an entire section dedicated to portfolios. Photographers and artists can deliver a professionally printed and bound book to prospective clients rather than an envelope full of photos or an album with artwork behind the plastic covers.
• Memoirs are another use to which POD is being put. The writers have no illusion that their memoirs will be of broad interest, but rather want to put these works into the hands of children and grandchildren to whom they do matter. A published volume is a nicer keepsake than a sheaf of papers stapled in the upper left-hand corner.

I could list more uses of POD, but you get the idea. The publishing of books once was restricted to the publishing industry, which decides which books to publish based on profit projections, and those who are able or willing to sink a bunch of money into a vanity publisher. Today, technology has made publishing a book easy, so the medium can be put to uses other than publishing to sell books and make a name as an author.

Good books don’t require mainstream publishers

This leads to my next issue with Goldberg’s argument. In his February post, he insisted, “The best way to attract a publisher is to write a good book.” That’s hard to argue with. Still, there are flaws in the assertion. To start with, there’s a shocking amount of crap available in bookstores. Somebody must be publishing all that garbage, which means the publishing industry sometimes produces something other than “a good book.”

Conversely, there are plenty of writers who can’t get onto a publisher’s radar screen. Publishers won’t take unsolicited manuscripts and agents won’t read books by unknowns. That was certainly the case with Terry Fallis, president of Canadian PR agency Thornley Fallis and co-host of the Inside PR podcast.

A veteran of Canadian politics, Fallis wrote a novel mining that background called “The Best Laid Plans.” I asked Terry—who did write a good book—about his experience trying to get the book published:

I spent a year after my manuscript was done trying in vain to find an agent and a publisher.  I am not convinced that a single person either from the literary agent community or from small and large publishers ever actually read a single word of my manuscript.  It is very, very difficult to break through with agents and publishers in this day and age.  The slush piles are huge and growing daily.  I understand that in the past, publishers were prepared to subsidize good books that might not sell a lot with the profits from their blockbuster titles.  I???m now told that each title must stand on its own.  My novel, about a rather narrow field, Canadian politics, seems an unlikely candidate for mainstream publishing.  So instead of banging my head against that brick wall for another year or so, I decided to publish independently.

The idea of a narrow niche is an important consideration. While there may be interest in a niche-focused book, fiction or non-fiction, if the potential audience isn’t big enough, in the publisher’s view, it won’t be published. At Blurb, for example, you can find a book on the making of a miniature firearm. The subject is sure to fascinate a few people. But enough to lead Simon & Shuster to publish it? Yeah, you bet.

Poetry also fits into this category. Mainstream publishers don’t print a lot of poetry because it doesn’t sell. But there are good poets with audiences for their work. Before POD, they were shit outa luck. Today, their readers can buy their volumes.

The size of the book is another consideration. Neville tells me he frequently refers to a book he bought from the bookstore of online POD company Lulu. He tells me WordPress Themes has been an invaluable resource. It only runs 93 pages and the audience of people who want to create their own WordPress themes is small. That’s a deadly combination in the publishing world, regardless of the fact that author John Godley has written “a good book.”

It’s not beneath an author to market his book

In his February post, Goldberg is aghast that Yvonne would suggest that authors should market their own works. Yvonne noted that publishers ask for a marketing plan in their proposals. “I’ve had over two dozen books published by real publishers,” he wrote. “No editor has ever asked me for an ‘extensive marketing plan’ before considering my books.”

Goldberg, it’s worth noting, writes a lot of mysteries based on popular TV shows (among other things). While I have not had two dozen books published, I have had half a dozen published. What distinguishes my books from Goldberg’s is the genre: I write business-focused books. I have been published by four different publishers. Every last one of them required an extensive marketing plan.

But whether it’s required is neither here nor there. Book publicity is a big business and it’s the authors who hire book publicists, not the publishers. Authors published by Knopf and Scribner go on book tours to market the book. Terry Fallis read his book out loud, each chapter an episode of a short-term podcast.

So how did Terry’s self-publishing effort turn out? Remember, Terry published via POD; not a single copy is printed that isn’t ordered.

First, he says, some 1,500 people have downloaded all 20 chapters of the podcast, and many of them have bought the printed copy. The podcast and Terry’s other publicity efforts have produced other results, Terry notes:

• Had “The Best Laid Plans picked up by Podiobooks (Evo Terra???s great audio book site);
• Organized a Toronto book launch event that attracted 100 people and sold about 75 books;
• Did a book signing at a university bookstore;
• Had the entire podcast aired in 20 episodes by the leading European satellite radio network in a primetime evening slot;
• Had reviews and or blurbs in several publications;
• Spoken to groups about my publishing/social media experience (Using new media to drive old media);
• Been interviewed on Talk Politics, a leading talk show on CPAC (Canada???s CSPAN);
• Spoken at a bookclub that chose my novel;
• Had many Toronto and one big Ottawa bookstore stock the novel;
• Secured positive quotations from prominent politicians.

Ultimately, Terry has sold over 400 copies with sales continuing to grow. Since iUniverse, the online POD service he used, is not a vanity press, he invested nothing, paying only for copies that are printed and pocketing the profit. Terry sets the price above the cost he pays for the printing of a unit, much the same as customers of CafePress do with t-shirts and other logo merchandise).

Of course, Terry would be the first to tell you he’d prefer to be with a mainstream publisher, and hopes the sales and publicity “The Best Laid Plans” has earned might attract one. But, he says:

In the end, the quality of the book matters. If a novel can???t attract an agent and/or publisher attention because it???s not very good, going the POD route probably won???t help. But if the novel is good but still can???t break through into mainstream publishing, POD gives the novel a chance.

By the way, you can get “The Best Laid Plans” through Amazon. That’s right, a POD book is available through Amazon. So much for Goldberg’s assertion that only mainstream publishing can get your book in front of readers.

Resistance to change

Read through the comments on Goldberg’s blog and Yvonne’s original post. What seems to come through loudest and clearest is the sense that the members of an exclusive club—published authors—are upset that interlopers are breaching their walls. That’s fine; people who have achieved success under old models are often threatened by new ones. But that’s no reason to ignore the facts (e.g., vanity press and POD are two entirely different things) or to throw around lines like, “DiVita is one of a pack of POD vanity press hucksters who prey on the gullibility, desperation, and ignorance of aspiring authors.”

Goldberg seems to think that helping people make the book they want to publish look and read well is some kind of fraudulent activity, since the book will never actually sell. He fails to understand that most of the people coming to Yvonne and her peers are not seeking to publish bestsellers. They’re writing their family history, for example, and are willing to invest a few bucks to improve the quality for distribution to family members.

This is the kind of change POD technology has brought to the publishing world, so much so that (as Goldberg notes) the publishers of “Books in Print” have had to redefine the criteria for inclusion in its hallowed pages. As well they should. Just as technology has enabled anybody to publish a website (even Goldberg), it has enabled anybody to print a book for any purpose, not solely those deemed economically feasible by the publishing industry.

Some published authors may not like it. But that’s too damn bad.