Skip to main content

Should I self-publish my popular science book?

Image by Nick Morrison from Unsplash
As both a science writer and editor of www.popularscience.co.uk I get quite a few emails asking about writing science books, wondering if self-publishing is a good idea and asking if it's possible to get a review on the popularscience.co.uk site.

Writing a book - typically in the region of 80,000 to 100,000 words - is not a trivial task, but it can be very fulfilling. There are a handful of essential questions to ask yourself before going any further, which add up to 'Why am I the right person to write about this topic?' and 'Why would other people want to read it?' 

As far as being the right person goes, you don't have to be a working scientist to write a good popular science book, but you do need to have a strong understanding of the subject and to be able to present it in a way that others will find accessible. It should be a subject that excites you - if it doesn't, it's very unlikely that you will be able to excite others.

However, there are plenty of subjects that are of interest to us as individuals but that aren't necessarily going to get many other people excited. If you have spent your life studying the life cycle of the lesser spotted snoot-warbler, then I'm sure it fascinates you... but it's hard to turn your knowledge into a narrative that will grip the general reader.

Unless you are a cutting edge working scientist, a real expert in your field, one thing to absolutely avoid is writing about your own personal theories, or telling us why all the scientists out there have got it wrong. Popular science can be used to put across new theories that run counter to the prevailing wisdom - but that approach takes a lot of backing up and is certainly not appropriate for a self-published book.

Honestly assessing your book idea is not easy to do - you have a deep vested interest in it. I would suggest running it by other people, preferably not relations (or me) and asking for honest opinions. One piece of advice from a former literary agent of mine I would really recommend - always ask 'Is this a book or a magazine article?' Can the idea sustain a whole book? To check this, it's important to write out a detailed chapter breakdown of what will be in it, so that you can get a feel for the structure of the book. (This is also hugely valuable when it comes to writing it.)

Once you have your detailed breakdown, I would recommend trying it on a few publishers first. Publishers buy non-fiction titles before they are written - you don't need to produce the whole book up front. Make sure you choose publishers that do have popular science in their output, otherwise you are wasting their time and simply irritating them. They won't make an exception for you.

Be prepared for rejection (or, more likely, for being totally ignored). If that continues to be the case, then it is worth considering self-publishing. This is easy to do now with something like Amazon's KDP, which makes it possible to bring out your book both in physical form and as a Kindle ebook. I have done this for my Stephen Capel series of detective novels - and it's very satisfying to do. But there are a couple of provisos to bear in mind.

Getting published this way does not mean that you will have a bestseller on your hands. I know there are occasional exceptions, but the vast majority of self-published books only sell a few tens of copies to friends and relations. (Actually, even books put out by publishers can often sell only hundreds of copies.) Getting your book to be visible and bought takes a whole lot doing. I know an author who has spent tens of thousands of pounds of his own money publicising a book (which wasn't even self-published). I think he would argue that it was worthwhile - but you have to go into this with your eyes wide open. His decision has resulted in considerably more sales than would otherwise have been the case, but it has certainly not made him rich. Remember that you may well only earn around £1 a copy for each book sold. Always bear in mind how many copies you will have to sell to cover any expenditure on marketing.

This leads us on to the final question of getting reviews. An excellent way to improve a book's visibility is to get it reviewed - but there are relatively few places that review popular science books, including, of course, this website. We have reviewed a handful of self-published books and will always look at a press release for a book if it's sent to info@popularscience.co.uk - but in most cases we won't be able to review it. If we do decide to take a look, we expect to be provided with a physical copy of the book - you can't expect a reviewer to buy a copy, and many reviewers prefer a physical book to an ebook for review purposes.

The last thing I would want to do is put anyone off writing. It can be a wonderful thing to do, and can be extremely rewarding. But please do be aware that most of us will never write a bestseller and will not be made rich by getting published. Popular science books are now being written by an impressively diverse set of writers - and this could include you - but it is essential to be realistic about the likely outcomes.

Feature by Brian Clegg - See all of Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly digest for free here

Comments

  1. Hi Brian - I wonder if that author who spent £££ publicising a book that was even being published by a proper publisher was me? If not - then all well and good, I am not alone. To all authors, I would strongly advise getting an agent. They will give you the best advice, and as their reputation and livelihood depend on selling books, their advice won't be tinged by anything sentimental or unrealistic. When I received a decent advance for my most recent book, my agent advised spending some of it on hiring professional publicists to get the word out. It's hard to know whether this has made much difference in sales -- one lacks the control experiment - but it DID result in my book getting worldwide exposure in magazines, radio interviews and especially podcasts, which wouldn't have happened had I done everything myself. Of course, when one is writing, the first person you need to please is oneself. But if you are writing for others, it takes a lot of effort in today's crowded market to ensure that these others even know the book is out there, let alone buy it and read it. And for that you need to call in the professionals. And, yes, it hasn't made me rich. I still have the day job.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Hi Cromercrox - as it happens, it was someone else I had in mind, but your advice is very sensible. My main aim here though was for those thinking of spending money on publicising a self-published book, which needs even more caution.

      Delete
  2. Hello Brian, That is sound advice, which will be much appreciated by novice writers. Most of my books are self-published. They are not popular science, but tutorial accounts of technical subjects (a few of them have been reviewed here).
    Increasing sales does not have to involve a major book launch, one-off interviews or magazine articles; it can be achieved by a constant low-level advertising campaign using twitter ads, Google ads, and/or Amazon ads (I use twitter and Amazon). It is hard to be certain, but after several years experience, I am fairly sure this low-level advertising increases sales.
    If you do self-publish then get a proof-reader. Irrespective of how good you are at writing, you will never spot all the errors that a proof-reader will find.
    By the way, book piracy is a major problem, which can be reduced (or at least delayed) by publishing paperbacks, rather than ebooks (book piracy reduces sales by about 30% in my experience).
    Finally, never miss an opportunity to let potential readers know where to find your books, for example: https://jamesstone.sites.sheffield.ac.uk/books
    James V Stone, j.v.stone@sheffield.ac.uk.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Battle of the Big Bang - Niayesh Afshordi and Phil Harper *****

It's popular science Jim, but not as we know it. There have been plenty of popular science books about the big bang and the origins of the universe (including my own Before the Big Bang ) but this is unique. In part this is because it's bang up to date (so to speak), but more so because rather than present the theories in an approachable fashion, the book dives into the (sometimes extremely heated) disputed debates between theoreticians. It's still popular science as there's no maths, but it gives a real insight into the alternative viewpoints and depth of feeling. We begin with a rapid dash through the history of cosmological ideas, passing rapidly through the steady state/big bang debate (though not covering Hoyle's modified steady state that dealt with the 'early universe' issues), then slow down as we get into the various possibilities that would emerge once inflation arrived on the scene (including, of course, the theories that do away with inflation). ...

Ctrl+Alt+Chaos - Joe Tidy ****

Anyone like me with a background in programming is likely to be fascinated (if horrified) by books that present stories of hacking and other destructive work mostly by young males, some of whom have remarkable abilities with code, but use it for unpleasant purposes. I remember reading Clifford Stoll's 1990 book The Cuckoo's Egg about the first ever network worm (the 1988 ARPANet worm, which accidentally did more damage than was intended) - the book is so engraved in my mind I could still remember who the author was decades later. This is very much in the same vein,  but brings the story into the true internet age. Joe Tidy gives us real insights into the often-teen hacking gangs, many with members from the US and UK, who have caused online chaos and real harm. These attacks seem to have mostly started as pranks, but have moved into financial extortion and attempts to destroy others' lives through doxing, swatting (sending false messages to the police resulting in a SWAT te...

Why Nobody Understands Quantum Physics - Frank Verstraete and Céline Broeckaert **

It's with a heavy heart that I have to say that I could not get on with this book. The structure is all over the place, while the content veers from childish remarks to unexplained jargon. Frank Versraete is a highly regarded physicist and knows what he’s talking about - but unfortunately, physics professors are not always the best people to explain physics to a general audience and, possibly contributed to by this being a translation, I thought this book simply doesn’t work. A small issue is that there are few historical inaccuracies, but that’s often the case when scientists write history of science, and that’s not the main part of the book so I would have overlooked it. As an example, we are told that Newton's apple story originated with Voltaire. Yet Newton himself mentioned the apple story to William Stukeley in 1726. He may have made it up - but he certainly originated it, not Voltaire. We are also told that â€˜Galileo discovered the counterintuitive law behind a swinging o...