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PUBLISHING PERMUTATIONS
Just about every day someone asks me to explain the difference between publishing and self-publishing. And every day I spend at least half an hour answering their questions. So, to save me time and you from having to take notes, I have done my best to tell you what you need to know as quickly and simply as I can. Here goes:

TRADITIONAL PUBLISHING
You ‘sell’ the idea to a publisher (or an agent, who sells it to a publisher for you). Firstly, you write a letter outlining your idea and offering to send a synopsis and marketing summary (proposal). If they see your proposal and like it, they give you a contract. You write the book but they do the editing, design, layout, cover, marketing, administration and everything else you can think of.

You get paid an advance in three amounts (on signing contract, on submission of manuscript and on publication). This is an advance on royalties and could be about £3,000 (some publishers do not pay an advance). If your idea is fantastic you could make much more. Royalties tend to be 7-10% of net receipts, which ends up equating to less than £1 a book if the book retails at £10. However, they could sell many copies, overseas and translation rights and do several editions, which will increase your earning over time.

If you want to go down this route it is imperative that you research the market thoroughly, find out how to write a proposal and have a clear idea of your competition before you start.

It can take a year or more for a book to come out from the moment you sign a contract.

A traditionally published book will have the publisher with whom you signed a contract named as the publisher on the cover.

SELF-PUBLISHING
You have the idea and can write your book however you please. You may like to become a publishing company in order to do this, but you can always hook up with another small publisher. The advantage of self-publishing is that you get to keep all the profit. You also get to pay for everything! If a book costs £2 to print and you sell it for £10 you make £8 a book less your costs. If you can market it easily, this can work very well and may be idea for you if you have access to a ready market, particularly if you are professional speaker or corporate trainer.

Editing is likely to cost you £500 - £3,000, depending on how many pages you have and how bad (or good) you are at writing. Expect to do at least three drafts of the book and to have each one edited for both concept and content.

Design is likely to cost you £500 - £3,000 for cover, internal layout and input. This depends on how many bells and whistles you want, and how much work you want doing on the cover. The cover should cost you £150 - £500 of this fee.

LITHO
Printing can be done lithographically, which is a better quality, and the unit price will reduce the more copies you have printed. It is usually uneconomic to do a litho print run of less than 1,000 copies at a time. 2,000 copies of a 200 page book may incur a print bill in the UK of about £3,000. There is no VAT charged on book printing.

POD
Printing can be Print on Demand (POD). This is digital printing and tends to be of lesser quality than lithographic, but you only need to do 50 or so at a time. With POD the unit cost stays the same. Expect to pay about £2 for a cover and 1p per page for a black and white book, printed on demand in the UK.

PRICING
By the way the recommended retail price (RRP) of a book should be 4-5 times the unit print cost.

STUFF YOU NEED
If you self-publish you need to obtain a set of International Standard Book Numbering code (ISBN) numbers from the ISBN Agency in Farnham, Surrey. Information can be obtained from www.whitaker.co.uk

If you self-publish you may want to sell your book on Amazon. In this case you need to sign up to the Amazon Advantage scheme. Amazon liaises with Nielsen Bookdata (who supply new book information to libraries and bookshops). When you get your ISBN numbers you will be sent Nielsen Bookdata forms so that you can register each new title as it comes out. In time, Nielsen Bookdata supply Amazon with information (6-8 weeks usually). But you need to also register for Amazon Advantage. Amazon will take 55% commission for books sold and you pay to post the books too.

A self-published book will have your publishing company (usually) named as the publisher on the cover.

VIRTUAL PUBLISHING ON DEMAND
This is a kind of halfway house. Here you write the book however you like, and pay to have someone edit it for you, as for self-publishing, above. However, you do not need to obtain ISBN numbers nor bar codes. Neither do you need to pay for design. Unlike having your book published by a traditional publisher, virtual publishers are not selective about what they take on.

Every virtual, or online, publisher offers a different deal. Basically, they will give your manuscript a simple but effective design and cover, register it with the major online bookstores (Amazon and others) and will print and distribute your books for you. Unless you pay for extra services they will not do the marketing for you, however.

So, you send a PDF or Word version of your finished and perfect book to an online publisher such as www.booksurge.com, www.iUniverse.com or www.Trafford.com. Then, for a one off fee (of between £100 and £600), they design your book and print it on demand (one at a time). They handle the money, bag and mail each book and pay you from 20% - 60% of RRP on all books sold. You can buy back your own books at around 50% discount too if you like. Some insist you buy a minimum of 100 at a time.

Almost all virtual publishers request a fee for their services. I said ‘almost’.

Some companies are not asking for a fee. Like virtual publishers they will design your book, but they place it in their own online bookstore and then pay you 50% of the RRP on all softback and ebooks sold. Lean Marketing is offering just this service. Unlike many virtual publishers, however, they are discerning, and only accept books that are on overseas living, self-development and business subjects and that also meet with their approval. If you think this route may be for you look at www.leanmarketingpress.com/writers and their associated bookshop www.bookshaker.com.

The virtually published route means that your book will have the virtual publisher named as the publisher on the cover.

A WORD ABOUT BOOKSHOPS
Before you head for the publishing game, it is worth noting that bookshops will expect to get at least 35% discount when they buy your books. They may also return any damaged books to you and not pay for them. Now that the Net Book Agreement has been abolished people do not have to sell a book at its cover price. This means that bookshops can be ruthless. Some may demand 50% discount. Mail order catalogues may demand as much as 75%. When calculating your profit it is important that you remember to account for this.

Jo Parfitt © 2005