I must convince my son, David, that he should invest $2,000 of his own money into the needs that are necessary to actually get the book published. There used to be two ways to publish a book, have your book bought by a big publishing house, with an advance and a certain promise that you would receive so much money for each book that is sold, and "vanity" publishing where you put up several thousand dollars to publish X number of books, then you had to sell the books yourself and possibly not make back the money you invested and since no one helped you sell your book, you may have the misfortune of never selling many books and taking a lot of loss.
For some time now, but most recently in the last six months, a new way to publish a book has materialized. There is still the process of actually writing the book and then paying to have her edited by a professional-and that costs about $400-$2,000, depending on the size of the book and the rate the editor charges for his work. If there is a lot of work for him to do, then it costs more money, but it is a necessary step in the process.
So you have your edited manuscript; what next? Well a lot of authors, including those who have previously been published by one of the big houses, are now choosing to use the new publishing and distribution services offered by a number of relatively new publishing/distributing houses because your royalties are a much higher percentage of sales and because so many books are now being published in e-book format as well as in print. There are a number of publishers, the one I chose to work with, Outskirts Press, is a division of Amazon.com. You no longer have to have thousands of books printed at one time and then figure out where to store them while you attempt to sell them. Instead they Print On Demand (POD) and the instant your book is sold, they print up a book for the order. In the case of an e-book, it is instantly available.
The new publishers/distributors charge only for services rendered, and they usually have a lot of service for a relatively small amount of money. For my publisher they have 40 different services that they provide for $999.00. They print your book hard or soft cover, with black & white interior, and a colored, newly-designed cover that you help design if you want to. They market and distribute your book through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, and several other e-book and print book outlets, as well as having it available world-wide. You have an agent that works for you and a marketing manager who helps you to sell your books and get the word out about your new book. Your royalties are 70% of the sales of the book. In my case I have to buy a few things for my computer in order to put out the copy to the publisher. I need Norton Backup, and Adobe Acrobat Distiller for formatting the files from Word to PDF.
In short, I need to ask David for $2000.00 to back up my project, and then my book should be ready to be placed in stores and on e-book sites for sale within the next three months instead of waiting another 1-2 years for slow-go publishers to get around to publishing the book. It is an exciting new world for publishing.
Yesterday I made an Excel spreadsheet to show what different publishers charge for their services and what services they provide. Outskirts Press really led the pack as far as what they offer you and the distribution with them is through many sources and outlets. I also had to include things like postage and business cards, charges for a return policy, and 250 announcements that the book has been published.
I made a chart showing how much revenue you can expect from say a $2.99 e-book; which is $2.09 each, and I wrote up a sales plan detailing the work I would do with my internet presence-blogs, e-mails, forums, facebook, and twitter, and I am sure I shall find other avenues to promote the book.
Today I am writing out the business plan and that should take about one or two days to get right. I am also re-typing the book into a format that Outskirts Press requires.
Tomorrow is the Sabbath so I will not be writing, but on Monday I will be able to tell you how my meeting with David goes, and if we are in business together.
For some time now, but most recently in the last six months, a new way to publish a book has materialized. There is still the process of actually writing the book and then paying to have her edited by a professional-and that costs about $400-$2,000, depending on the size of the book and the rate the editor charges for his work. If there is a lot of work for him to do, then it costs more money, but it is a necessary step in the process.
So you have your edited manuscript; what next? Well a lot of authors, including those who have previously been published by one of the big houses, are now choosing to use the new publishing and distribution services offered by a number of relatively new publishing/distributing houses because your royalties are a much higher percentage of sales and because so many books are now being published in e-book format as well as in print. There are a number of publishers, the one I chose to work with, Outskirts Press, is a division of Amazon.com. You no longer have to have thousands of books printed at one time and then figure out where to store them while you attempt to sell them. Instead they Print On Demand (POD) and the instant your book is sold, they print up a book for the order. In the case of an e-book, it is instantly available.
The new publishers/distributors charge only for services rendered, and they usually have a lot of service for a relatively small amount of money. For my publisher they have 40 different services that they provide for $999.00. They print your book hard or soft cover, with black & white interior, and a colored, newly-designed cover that you help design if you want to. They market and distribute your book through Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, Kindle, and several other e-book and print book outlets, as well as having it available world-wide. You have an agent that works for you and a marketing manager who helps you to sell your books and get the word out about your new book. Your royalties are 70% of the sales of the book. In my case I have to buy a few things for my computer in order to put out the copy to the publisher. I need Norton Backup, and Adobe Acrobat Distiller for formatting the files from Word to PDF.
In short, I need to ask David for $2000.00 to back up my project, and then my book should be ready to be placed in stores and on e-book sites for sale within the next three months instead of waiting another 1-2 years for slow-go publishers to get around to publishing the book. It is an exciting new world for publishing.
Yesterday I made an Excel spreadsheet to show what different publishers charge for their services and what services they provide. Outskirts Press really led the pack as far as what they offer you and the distribution with them is through many sources and outlets. I also had to include things like postage and business cards, charges for a return policy, and 250 announcements that the book has been published.
I made a chart showing how much revenue you can expect from say a $2.99 e-book; which is $2.09 each, and I wrote up a sales plan detailing the work I would do with my internet presence-blogs, e-mails, forums, facebook, and twitter, and I am sure I shall find other avenues to promote the book.
Today I am writing out the business plan and that should take about one or two days to get right. I am also re-typing the book into a format that Outskirts Press requires.
Tomorrow is the Sabbath so I will not be writing, but on Monday I will be able to tell you how my meeting with David goes, and if we are in business together.
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