Stone In The Surf Press

AUTHOR'S NOTE: I wrote this section as the iPub concept was forming. I decided to leave it in tact.  The information is still very relevant AND it gives some insight as to how much the industry has changed in a very short period of time.

Money Budget

This is an area where many people have visiting this site have looked for answers.  Like a good college professor, I’m not going to give you any.  I will however give you the tools to do your research.  The reason there is no one answer, every book and publishing scenario is unique.  They all have common elements with a seemingly infinite number of variations.  Remember your organic chemistry class – one of my favorites (not).  I think it is exceedingly important for any author or publisher to understand all of the costs associated with the business of publishing.  The more you understand the business, the better decisions you will make and the fewer unhappy surprises you will discover.  Copy or print the form below and fill in the blanks.  For each section I will provide some pointers and a few tips I’ve learned along the way.

 TIP: There is always another vendor/printer/supplier/ solution.

 YOUR BOOK

I’ll assume that your book is completed, edited and that you or your brother-in-law Mel has created the cover design.  This means that your book is in printer's terms “Camera Ready”  That means they don’t have to do any pre-press adjustments to your work.  This leads into a whole section under “PRINTERS”.  No matter which route you take, be it Indie or POD your costs to have a camera ready work will be the same.  For When The Force Isn't With You, I did all of the text and cover art myself.  If a middle-aged accountant from Burbank can learn how do it – anyone can.

 TIP: The more work you can do to prepare your book for the printer, the easier (and more cost effective) it will be.

 BASIC ELEMENTS

Every book needs three things in order for it to be accepted by the retail bookstore world.  Ignore these if you are ONLY going to sell books out of the back of your car.  You must have an ISBN, an EAN/BarCode and it is wise to copyright your work.  The ISBN is the most costly of these.  Bowkers claims to be the only people who can sell an ISBN and as of this writing they only sell them in blocks of 10 – very costly.  There are companies who sell individual ones.  The difference will be that your book won’t be listed in Bowkers “Books In Print” data base.  My advice would be to save your money, buy a single one and spend the difference promoting your book.  An ISBN is simply a unique number that identifies your book and allows for a unique Bar Code.  If and when your book becomes a huge seller, then invest the money. 

 TIP: The cost of a single ISBN number should not be more than $35.00.

 Don’t spend money on a bar code until you have checked with your printer.  Most printers will provide you a barcode as part of their service for little or no fee.  I recommend this from a cost savings standpoint AND because if the printer generates the bar code, they know it will work on their press.

 TIP: Your printer should provide you a bar code included in their quote.

Copyright.  It cost $45 to file.  It takes less than 2 minutes to fill out the form, insert your book and the form into an envelop along with your check and mail it.  I’ll be glad to do that for you for $175 to $250.  Do it yourself and spend the difference promoting your book.

 TIP: Save money – submit your own Copyright.

 WEBSITE

I can’t stress enough how important this is.  Every book title you have should have a unique website.  It is the key essential way that allows the world to find you.  It used to be scary.  Today people like GoDaddy have made it simple.  Shop around and see who has the best price AND if you are not up to learning how to build websites (a task I found very frustrating and time consuming at first) find one with pre-designed pages.  Don’t get carried away.  Hosting is different than a domain name.  The name is just as it implies.  www.stoneinthesurf.com is my website I can have any number of companies host it and I can move that name from one to another and my visitors won’t see this.  Generally the company that sells you the name will also provide hosting and email. 

 All you need is one page with these elements:

Book Title

Cover Image

Description 200-500 words

Author Bio 200 words

Author Pic – optional

Book Specs

    Title

    ISBN

    Author

    Publisher

    Trim Size

    Binding

    Page Count

BUY NOW link – most important this should link to your fulfillment provider

Blog – optional (but this keeps your site fresh)

Calendar – optional

Contact information (more than an email is up to you)

You may want to add email if its not provided.  This will keep mail specific to your book separate from your regular email.  Companies also off web traffic products which push your website out into the internet in acceptable ways.  If they are not too expensive (often times bundled in packages) it’s probably worth the investment.  Think of how much you saved by filing your own copyright – spend some of that here.

TIP: Without a website (not just a page on some company’s site) the world can’t find you.

DISTRIBUTION AND FULFILLMENT

(or if I only knew then what I know now…)

This can make or break you.  BE VERY CAREFUL.  Here is where the business of publishing and book distribution comes into play.  By the way the Fulfillment takes care of retail sales to individuals, Distribution takes care of wholesale sales to bookstores.  If you are serious about having your books in book stores the world works this way.  Bookstores like Barnes & Nobel all the way down to your local independent book store don’t want to deal with thousands of vendors, especially non-business vendors.  They prefer to limit their suppliers to companies like Ingram and Baker & Taylor.  This allows them to work with a known entity and for returns (this is a key element in the world of books – yes not all books sell).  Ingram doesn’t want to deal with hundreds of little independents either.  That’s where the second tier consolidators come in.  If you want to play with the big dawgs this is how it works.  The trick is to find a second tier consolidator that won’t bleed you of every penny.  There are lots of them out there.  BookMasters is one.  They are good people to work with, unless your book isn’t flying off the shelf.  The monthly costs can be daunting.  That’s why I recommend looking for a no-load distribution house.  A good example of this is Book Clearing House.  There is a one time set up fee and I think a small annual fee imposed by Ingram now on every book (even AuthorHouse charges me an annual fee to stay in Ingram).  BCH does not charge storage, or any other monthly fees.  They don’t charge you every time someone calls and asks about your book.  They are very simple and straightforward.  They make their money by charging a little more on each transaction.  Had I known then what I know now … for an indie, it is the best way to go.  Look at a lot of distributors and ask for every single thing they will charge you for, then ask again, and then ask them again.  I found few were willing to be up front about ALL of their fees.  With one company I discovered that I would lose $2.00 on every transaction.  And this makes sense why?

 Returns – POD.  Companies like AuthorHouse and iUniverse now have return programs.  This allows your book into Ingram with returns.  The cost is very high.  Why spend your money here?  Seriously consider printing the books and going with a no-load distributor.  The money you save is better invested in marketing.

Fulfillment and Distribution companies DO NOT market or promote books – you do.

TIP: Search for a good no load second tier Distributor.  Understand every single fee and cost.  Cancellation fees can be painful.

BOOKS

The minimum you’ll want to purchase is 100 to 250 no more.  Realize this is the world of digital printing.  If you should be so fortunate to sell out – reprints can be made in less than a week.  That is a much better problem than a garage full of old books.  Think about 100 books, at least half you will need to give away as promotional copies to bookstores, reviewers, book clubs, etc.  20 you will need to fill the distribution pipeline.  That leaves 30 to sell out of your car.  Buying 100 copies from a POD can cost upwards of a $1,000.  Again, I would recommend that it is wiser to shop for a good printer and spend the difference on promotion.  www.printellectual.com is a great service (put in one bid and get a lot of printers to quote on it) and check my recourses page.  Get at least 10 bids on your project.  I printed When The Force Isn't With You with Alexanders and found their quality and customer service to be exceptional. 

Make sure you understand what format the printer wants your work delivered in, that they will provide the barcode and that they will split a shipment (20-30 books need to go to your distributor and the rest to you).

TIP:  Get at least 10 quotes.  Make sure the quote includes a bar code and split delivery.

PROMOTION

This is the $64 million question.  Where and how much?  The president of Pepsi was asked once why they spend billions on advertising every year when his product was a household name.  He replied that his company was like a jet flying at 40,000 feet.  Advertising was the fuel that kept it in the air.  Stop advertising and sooner or later, you’ll crash.  The same is true when you are trying to get off the ground.  There isn’t one right answer to how to promote your book.  It will all depend on how much time you have to dedicate to it, the topic of your book and how relevant it is to current events, etc.  I have discovered that people don’t buy books because of the topic, they buy books because the author has a story to tell.  The more the world knows about you, the greater the chances of fueling the public’s curiosity to read what you wrote.  No matter what you do to promote you and your book, run the numbers.  I can’t stress this enough.  I got a pitch from a POD company that I could have a cover shot of my book on their New York Times full page add for $1,200.  That’s sounds amazing, right!  My book in the New York Times!  Then I had to figure at $0.50 royalty per book, I would have to sell 2,400 books to break even.  What are the odds that 2,400 people are going to read my book, just because they saw a 1 inch pic of the cover on the bottom left hand corner of an inside page ad amongst 100 other books.  Not so good.  Be very wise.  Always think in terms of “how many books will I have to give away to cover the cost of this?”  I find visualizing the tangible to be very helpful.  Make every penny count. 

There are many FREE press release services on the internet.  They all work just fine.  When you are selling thousands of books, you can upgrade.  Start out with the free services.  Be wary of the ones that are not actually free but charge you.  Most of the free sites offer a basic service for free with upgrades – that’s fair. 

So where or how is the best way to promote your book?  I don’t believe there is one right answer or solution.  I found a radio campaign to be very helpful in driving traffic to my website.  It is still too early to see if that will have an impact on sales.  The answer to promotion will be in a combination of website, media and word of mouth.  The more the world knows about you and your book, the better your chances are.  Always keep in mind, “How many books will I have to give away to cover the cost of this?”  Make every penny count.

HOMEWORK

 Here’s a simple chart to fill out.  You can add elements that you find relevant to your book, editing, etc.  Consider this a one year project.  So if the Distributor charges you $7/month for storage, multiply that by 12 months and put in $84.  When considering incremental charges like, transaction fees – estimate the number of books you think you might sell per month, 10 is a high number – seriously.  You can also make several versions of this for 0 sales, 10/month, 20/month, etc.  If you need help with this, just drop me an email.  I can send you the excel file.  When you’re finished add up all of the numbers and see which is the best solution for you.  When you dig into some of these companies, you’ll be surprised at how much they cost. 

 TIP: A cold reality of publishing is that no one except you cares if your book sells.  They all want their take upfront.  Always get references and always ask lots of questions.

 This is a beginning point from which to build your cost analysis.  Notice how I don’t have a factor for revenue?  That’s another project altogether.

 

			POD Publishers
Provider	WTFIWY	Independent	“W”	“X”	“Y”	“Z”
Base Package
BASIC ELEMENTS
ISBN	35
Bar Code	0
Copyright	35	35.00
WEBSITE
Domain	2
Hosting	54
Web Page	0
eMail	0
Web Push	30
Google.Books	0
Google.Base	0
Yahoo.links	0
Featured Link	0
DIST. & FULFILL.
Set Up	100
Distribution
Fulfillment
Monthly Fee	0
Ingrams Fee	0
Admin Fees	0
Storage	0
Insurance	0
Stock In	0
Stock Out	0
Transaction Fee	0
Credit Card Fee	0
CS Support Fee	0
Shipping	0