Author | FAQ

Print-on-demand suggests that a book is only printed when it is demanded—in other words, rather than doing a print run of 1,000 and storing the books in your basement, your book is printed when it is ordered—from Amazon or another retailer. The per-copy print charge is higher than it would be with a large print run, but the advantage is that you don’t have to make any significant investment up front nor hand over your basement!

No. Self-publishing in and of itself is not a scam. What has tainted self-publishing are various companies and individuals eager to feed off the desperation of ill-informed writers by charging ridiculous prices for publishing their books, and sometimes even retaining all the rights.

It largely depends on how far you want to go. In essence, getting any old manuscript available on Amazon is very doable, but you might not have a nice, clean product to offer readers. Therefore, we always recommend authors invest at least a minimal amount to make sure their work rises above the “slush” standards.

If going about it alone, the most common investments a self-publishing author faces are:
– Editing: Reviewing and touching up the manuscript
– Cover design: Front and back cover design as well as spine
– The International Standard Book Number (ISBN): Depending on where you live (such as the United States), you might have to purchase yours.
– Formatting: Transforming your original document into something that is print-ready as well as optimized for digital reading devices.
Using a service like ours is an additional investment, but the advantage is that you spare yourself the learning curve and free up your time to focus on the things that interest you most.
To make things a little easier, we offer varying packages, but we can also customize packages according to your needs. You can view our packages here.

Our packages are useful for authors who need everything from A to Z, but they are not a must. We can customize a package based on your requirements. If you are working with your own designers, either for the cover or interior, we do ask to look at the artwork and approve it. After all, our motto is We won’t let you publish crap™, so we need to make sure the designs meet our standards.

Sure, that’s fine. We do suggest to authors that they cover their bases with a print version alongside the ebook, simply because there are still plenty of people who like reading a physical book. But if that’s not for you, we won’t force the issue.

No, we are not a publisher, per se. We provide support to authors through their publishing journey and beyond and are paid a fee reflective of the services we provide. We are not the official publisher of any author’s book, nor do we earn any royalties.

We upload your book to platforms that make the book available to various online retailers (such as Amazon), and they will take care of all the shipping.

Not really. While you might have an author website, you also are stuck with books that you likely will not be moving out of your basement quickly enough, as well as the onus of packing and shipping your books. Direct sales can be effective, especially if you are doing a special promo, such as signed copies or a special edition for a select few readers. Overall, however, you are definitely further ahead by leaving all the logistics to the distributor. Oh, and you can always get a nice author website. We do it all the time.

This depends on which publishing platform(s) you use as well as the format of your book (ebook royalties are calculated differently from print book royalties). Note that we do not touch a penny of your royalties. What you earn is yours and yours only.

At the contract stage we are not able to estimate printing costs for your book, as these are dependent on (among other factors) page count, trim size and paper quality, all of which we will only know once the book has been formatted. Generally speaking, we do not include book copies in our contracts.

We have worked with authors of international thrillers, personal development titles, children’s books, memoirs and everything in between. We occasionally grapple with the issue of zeroing in on a niche, but we simply love books and are not ready to commit to any one genre.

Getting a book stocked in stores is no easy task for any author. What we can do is help authors foster relationships with bookstores, organize book signings and understand how consignment contracts work.

By utilizing systems like IngramSpark, we do make your book available for order by retailers “worldwide.” Note that is not the same thing as having your book stocked in thousands of bookstores. Authors tend to think that this is what “thousands of retailers” means, which is exactly why we do not like expressing it this way. But yes, your book will be available through an extended distribution system.

We do not fulfill any book orders directly, these are all done through a third-party distribution system. We currently use IngramSpark for extended distribution, and you can read here which booksellers are included in their distribution.

Our contracts are simple yet thorough. The final number includes everything that is stated in the deliverables. Extra charges are only incurred when a) you require more revisions of a book cover/interior than the allotted three that we include; b) you want to add a service that was not included in the original contract. We will never tack on miscellaneous admin charges to your invoices, and we will never proceed with anything extra until you have approved the charge.

For black and white interiors, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) offers white and cream color paper options; no thickness options available. For color interiors (if you want to print in color), KDP offers a slightly thicker white stock. IngramSpark offers the same options as KDP for black and white interiors but a range of paper thicknesses for color ink.

Kindle Direct Publishing does not, as of this writing, offer hardcover options. IngramSpark, on the other hand, does. Do keep in mind that the cost of manufacturing hardcover books is significantly higher than for producing a paperback, and you will need to price your book accordingly in order to have a decent profit margin.

We are currently putting together an audiobook package. Stay tuned!

We offer many of the fundamental elements of any sound book marketing strategy, including website design, author branding, setting up social media accounts, and media kit design. Beyond this, we can also provide a book marketing plan complete with market research and a set of actionable items we recommend the author undertake.

That’s fine, we can take care of it for you.

PR is an art, and we do not purport to have the expertise nor the media contacts. We can put together a media kit for you and give you some general guidance. If you want assistance beyond that, we have a couple of PR firms that we can refer you to.

Our authors come to us with a range of objectives. We’ve worked with authors who wanted to publish a memoir for their children; others publish books that become their calling card for their consulting businesses. And others have published books intended for a larger audience. In our experience, selling books requires a long-term commitment, complemented by consistent marketing efforts. In many cases—most often for budgetary reasons—authors choose to take these efforts on themselves, making it difficult for us to measure “success”.

Talk to us!: We’re here to learn about your project and help you on your self-publishing journey.

Contact Us!