Self-publishing books not without pitfalls | ABC7 News | The Independent Publishing Magazine

ABC Local TV News carried a piece a couple of days ago on the self-publishing experience of a 92 year old airmen of World War II and his daughter who teamed up with him to help him publish his memoir, ‘Victory: Tales of a Tuskegee Airman‘. The video below does suffer from being presented once again as one of those offside ‘twee’ segments scuttled to the back-end of the news in the evening. However, it touches on many elements and experiences of first-time authors to the self-publishing arena.

It should not be underestimated the amount of mature authors coming to self-publishing, to see, perhaps, their one and only book published. We tend to have a view of the self-publishing community as a sharp and technically savvy populous, particularly since the emergence of the Internet as a marketing and advertising platform and the growth of digital publishing. The reality is that many mature writers are also attracted to self-publishing with time and long-held aspirations of writing that one book to reflect a life experience.

Les and Penny Williams recount their experience of using Booksurge (now merged into CreateSpace) and iUniverse.

Penny and Les decided to publish the memoir themselves instead of trying to find a willing publisher. It’s a route chosen these days by a growing number of aspiring writers who use digital technology and online publishing to get their books into print. Penny paid $1,700 to a service called BookSurge.com to help edit, design and print the memoir.

“They never got a correct proof to me. There were some parts we just couldn’t get straight with them,” Penny recalled.

She says the proofs kept coming back with errors and often, she had to pay extra for corrections. To top it off, the final proof had the biggest blunder of all. In the middle of the memoir, there were about 100 pages from someone else’s book.