Stanford Business

MAY 2006


Self-Publishing Spreads to Prominent Authors

Recent issues of this magazine show a surprising number of alumni authors, many of them self-published. By “self-published” we don’t mean they own their own printing presses. Instead, they share their ideas with the public in a variety of ways.

Seth Godin, MBA ’84, may have pioneered the movement in 2000, when he offered his Unleashing the Ideavirus as a free e-book. Some 125,000 downloaded copies and two months later he had 28,000 orders for a paper copy, which he had printed by a friend and then sold for $40 apiece.

Godin’s intent was to demonstrate the premise of his book, that ideas spread like viruses on the internet. The motive of Jim Collins, MBA ’83, in printing the monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors last November was to offer an inexpensive addendum to his 2001 book, Good to Great, that nonprofit organizations could purchase as a standalone. Last February, both Collins titles were among Amazon’s dozen top business sellers.

Other self-publishers may be trying to reach an intentionally limited audience or avoid the hassle of finding an agent and publisher. Jim Ukropina, MBA ’61, took his manuscript to a self-publisher that offers a range of services, including printing, editing, marketing, and distribution. Ukropina, a board director for more than 30 years, had an offer from a traditional publishing firm for his novel The Board: Behind Closed Doors with the Directors of DFP, Inc. Instead, he hired his own editor and went to 1st Books Library, a branch of the self-publisher AuthorHouse, because it could publish the book in half the time and he could keep control of content and format. In retrospect, he says, “I would take the same path.”