About Self-Publishing with Jared Koch, Self-published Author of CLEAN PLATES NYC

Self-published author of the healthy restaurant guide Clean Plates NYC, Jared Koch chose the DIY publishing route for his book--doing it all with a hand-picked team. Given the book's extremely respectable sales figures and extensive media coverage (from Martha Stewart to NBC to Fox News), About.com asked Koch to talk about the path to his self-publishing success.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how it led you to where you are now.
I was headed into medical school, just when my brother was starting an event entertainment business, so I decided to take a year off to help him out--and wound up running the business for eleven years. It was a great entrepreneurial and learning experience, but when I realized I wasn't really passionate about what I was doing, I decided to sell my stake in the business and return to medicine.

It had been so long since I'd studied that I decided to take a nutrition course as both a refresher and a quick test of my studying abilities. I was immediately transfixed by nutrition and the lack of knowledge (both my own and society's) on the subject. It became clear to me that nutrition is the foundation of many problems we face today (including personal and environmental health as well as economic stability). I remained in the field of nutrition and spent the next five years studying and eventually became a nutritional consultant and health coach certified by the Teachers College of Columbia University, the Global Institute for Alternative Medicine and the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. About six years ago I began my own practice working with individuals in helping them to eat healthier and improving their lifestyles.

What made you decide to publish Clean Plates NYC?
I was getting great results working with people in my practice, so I began exploring ways to utilize my entrepreneurial experience to reach a wider audience. I became keenly interested in determining what was actually convincing people to make changes and eat more healthfully. I discovered that while education and supporting my clients was important, simply giving them practical resources in the form of product and restaurant recommendations was the most useful tool. I would tell them to try a restaurant I knew served good quality and delicious food, and they would report back two weeks later raving about how much they loved it, that they had eaten there several times already, and planned on continuing to do so. Simply put, they were putting better food into their body then they had before.

I decided that a book would be a great way to not only preserve my recommendations but also to reach a greater audience while recognizing restaurants for responsible sourcing and delicious food (and hopefully inspiring other restaurants to follow suit). As I explored the publishing process, I began to realize that what I wanted to do was somewhat unique; I wanted to combine an informative book of nutrition content with a restaurant guide. Of course my entrepreneurial instinct kicked in, and I began to view it as a business venture.

Why did you choose to self-publish?
After careful consideration, I decided that it would take me the same amount of time to self-publish that it would just to convince a traditional publisher that my idea had any merit. I also began to envision an annually published guide rather than a single book and eventually concluded that it made more economic sense to publish myself.

You didn't use a self-publishing company but truly did it all yourself. What informed that choice?
I spent a good deal of time educating myself on the self-publishing process and researching my options. I explored a lot of the different self-publishing services but none were fitting my needs on every level. I ended up hiring independent people in each category (printer, designer, marketing/pr etc.) rather than hire a particular service that did it all. It was a lot of work and a lot of coordination, but it was the best fit for my needs.