Over 70 years ago, my grandfather wrote a book about the U.S. constitution. Not being a professional historian, he couldn’t find a publisher for his book, so he self-published. He had no real trouble formatting the book or getting a bunch of copies printed. It certainly wasn’t as cheap (in inflation-adjusted terms) as it would be today, but it was well within his means. 
However, without the backing of a publisher, his book had no chance for broad distribution in book stores. He could sell it directly and he could talk some local bookstores into carrying it on consignment, but widespread distribution was out of the question. When it comes to brick-and-mortar bookstores, things have barely changed in the last 70 years.
You can take the Print-on-Demand route, as I discussed in last month’s post, and make your books available through the major distributors, but without the marketing clout of a well-known publisher or a name-brand author, you’re no more likely to get your book into a brick-and-mortar bookstore than my grandfather was. Beyond that, to even be considered by physical bookstores, you need to offer your book at a deep discount (50-55% to a distributor or 35-45% for direct sales) and accept returns for a full refund. The difference today is that now you have alternate sales channels that didn’t exist 70 years ago. The game-changer, of course, is Amazon and the army of online bookstores following its lead. The Print-on-Demand companies all distribute through Amazon, and usually through other retailers as well. That means you don’t need to manage or pay for inventory and fulfillment. In addition, you can sell without allowing returns and with much smaller discounts. And your books will be available through most bookstores, though only by special order.
The tech comm connection
What does this mean for technical communicators? It turns out that the one thing that is still difficult—getting books into brick-and-mortar bookstores—is irrelevant in most cases. It’s highly unlikely that your local Barnes and Noble is going to be interested in the manual for your product anyway – there are exceptions, but they are rare—so losing that channel doesn’t matter. The combination of Print-on-Demand and online retailers makes it easy for you to sell printed versions of your content, even content that you already provide online for free. There is some effort involved with formatting and packaging content for print, but if you have a reasonably modern process, ideally XML, this isn’t hard. And you’ve already done (I hope) the really hard part—writing, editing, testing, and reviewing—for your online or help edition.
It may seem counterintuitive, but my company, XML Press, has had success selling the printed version of a book even when an identical PDF was available for free download; the convenience was worth it for buyers. In fact, for large books, we’ve been able to offer a perfect-bound copy, with a nice cover, for less than it would cost someone to print the PDF at a copy center, and we still make a profit. The returns for the typical product will likely be modest, but the overhead is low. And you’ll give customers who want print a benefit that your competitors may not offer.
Richard L. Hamilton is the founder of XML Press, which is dedicated to producing high quality, practical publications for technical communicators, managers, content strategists, marketers, and the engineers who support their work. Richard is the author of Managing Writers: A Real-World Guide to Managing Technical Documentation, and editor of the 2nd edition of Norm Walsh’s DocBook: The Definitive Guide, published in collaboration with O’Reilly Media.