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Frequently
Asked Questions
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| Are
you a vanity press? |
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Absolutely not. No
way. No how. We do not charge authors for publishing books or
submitting manuscripts. We pay to produce books up front, and we
take the risk of winding up with a roomful of them if they don't
sell. That's what publishing means.
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| Do you
use POD or digital technology? |
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No, we do not use
Print on Demand technology in any form to print our books. All our
books are printed with offset presses, ink on paper. The only
digital technology we use is in preparing manuscripts for the
press. (Click here
for an interesting discussion on this topic.)
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| Do you
pay advances and royalties? |
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We do not pay
advances at this time but our standard royalty rate is $1.00 per
book sold, payable quarterly. There are no stepped royalties
(increasing rates for larger numbers of books sold) but note that
an average cover price of $7.95 means that our standard royalty
rate comes out to about 12.5% beginning with the first book sold.
We also make a donation of 50¢ per book sold to NaNoWriMo.
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| How do
you market your books? |
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Recognizing that even
in larger publishing houses the lion's share of promotional
responsibility falls to the author, our marketing is primarily web
based. The more you read about how books are sold, the less
impressed you become with "standard" techniques like
print ads and so on. We'll get the buzz out on writing websites,
blogs, and word of mouth. We count on you, authors and readers, to
do the same.
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| Are
your books available on Amazon or other internet bookstores? |
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No. Amazon
Marketplace requires us to give them a 60% discount off the cover
price. B&N and others require similar pricing structures. We'd
rather charge less for the book in the first place and pass the
savings back to the author in the form of royalties from the first
book sold, as well as the 50¢ donation to NaNoWriMo.
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| How
about in bookstores? |
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Ingram, the major
distributor of books to brick and mortar bookstores in the United
States, customarily receives a 40% discount off the cover price.
As with Amazon and B&N, we would rather charge lower cover
prices and sell the books here on our website, passing on the
savings as above.
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| Do I
need an agent to submit a manuscript to you? |
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No. In fact, we
prefer to deal directly with authors. Our standard contract is so
simple and so slanted towards the author that there isn't much for
an agent to negotiate.
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| What
about subsidiary rights, translations, film rights and so on? |
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That's when you need
your agent. You keep all of those. All we're buying is First North
American publishing rights. If your book sells enough copies so
that those issues come into play, we'll be thrilled for
you.
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| Do you
publish non-fiction? |
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No, not at this time.
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| Why
should I take a chance on a new, unknown quantity like you? Why
shouldn't I try and get my book published by one of the mainstream
houses? |
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That's the real
question (well, two), now isn't it. The answer is that you don't
have to. Of course you can go the usual route of securing
representation from a literary agent who will then sell your book
to a publisher. We wish you the best of luck. But if you've
already tried that without success, and/or if you believe your
novel has real sales potential (even if not at the level required
by the New York gamblers) we invite you to submit to us.
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| What
if I have more questions? |
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We invite you to
call, email, snail mail, or any combination of those with your
question and we'll do our best to give you a satisfactory answer.
Just click on the Contact
link.
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