Michael Grass House 

Micropublishing and Writers Groups

Micropublishing as a new writers group's tool

Writers groups are great motivators to keep writers writing. But what if they could also help keep writers publishing? With micropublishing, writers groups gain the power to bring their stories to the world.

Here are some of the ways micropublishing can help your writers group:

• It can inject new energy into the group. Suddenly there's a goal. You can cheer each other along the publishing process as well as the writing process. 
• It can help you overcome the feeling of powerlessness that comes from repeated rejection letters. You know the book is good and the publisher didn't even read it. Now you can take control and move forward in spite of those rejections.
• It will bring closure and completeness to book projects. Once a book is in print, there's no more need to keep revising.
• It stirs up new ideas. What about a group writing project? What about writing some mysteries or children's adventure stories? What about pulling out those old manuscripts from years ago and giving them a second look? What about creating our own publisher name?

Why writers groups need a new model

Up till recently, there were only three options for writers groups: 

• keep sending manuscripts to traditional publishers and waiting for your lucky day
• resign yourselves to paying big bucks to vanity publishers for uninspiring publications and puny royalties
• just decide to write for the fun of it and forget about publishing at all.

Micropublishing is a fourth option. Your group can work together to help get each other's books to publication, inexpensively and efficiently. 

A writers group cooperative

Most writers groups are full of avid readers. Some groups are lucky enough to have editors and professional writers too. Why not use the group to polish the book and give it a good start? 

Here are some ways that a writers group can work as a publishing cooperative:

• Assess each other's manuscripts. Read them as you would a book that you bought. See the ebook Path to Publishing for Writers Groups for tips and ideas.
•  Help each other with editing, polishing, and proofreading.
• Create a publishing imprint (i.e., a unique publisher name) for your group's books. Work together on marketing and selling the books in your imprint and seek out new authors to pull into your brand.
• Buy each other's books as soon as they're available on Amazon and Kindle and write reviews to help generate those important early online sales.
• Help each other with marketing. Create promotional videos, group blogsites, websites, or other online marketing. Rent a table at an event to sell your books.  Talk to tourist agencies, event organizers, museum stores, farmer's markets, and other sales venues about the option of selling your group's books. 

How to get started

1. Set aside one meeting to discuss your options with micropublishing.  
2. Dig out all your completed manuscripts, no matter how old. Prepare copies for reading. Exchange them and read them in their entirety, instead of in small chunks. Decide whether you would have been satisfied with this purchase had you bought it for 99 cents on Kindle. 
3. Make a short list of the manuscripts that are ready for the world. As a group, polish those manuscripts. Meanwhile, the other manuscripts can go back to the authors for revisions.
4. You can choose just epublishing on Kindle, which is a very inexpensive way to sell popular fiction; or you can choose a combination of paper publishing on Amazon and epublishing on Kindle, with the option of ordering paper copies at cost to sell at your own events. Whatever you do, keep it simple. The more you try to do, the higher your costs -- not your profits.

EBOOKLETS

Michael Grass House Handbook: Use this ebooklet to learn more about the micropublishing process, pricing and profits, and the best ways to market your book. Please note that we are currently not accepting new books.

How To Edit Your Nonfiction Book: Use this brief guide to help you copyedit your nonfiction book. 

Copyright Issues in Self-Published Books: Use this brief guide to help you decide if your book has potential copyright issues. 

Path to Publishing for Writers Groups: Use this brief guide to guide your writers group toward publication.