WRITERSWORLD Self-Publishing Guide
Please take your time to read our extensive Self-Publishing Guide online, or
print a copy.
A General Statement
Whether you decide to use WRITERSWORLD or not, there is a wealth of
information in this document that may save you a lot of grief, time and money down the line.
This document points out the myriad traps and minefields you can walk into when
self-publishing a book, if uninformed or not wary.
It takes a lot of time and effort to write a good book, as hopefully you have done, so with
respect, grab a cup of coffee, put your feet up and take a little time to read this
document—and when comparing various self-publishing companies make sure you compare ‘like with
like’.
As you will see, a complex process is involved if a book is to be properly produced and made
readily and easily available to the public—a process that requires the specialist skills and
dedication of a whole team of people.
Table of Contents
Consultation
Graham Cook, the founder and owner of WRITERSWORLD, is more than
happy to arrange a two- to three-hour telephone conversation to discuss publishing your book,
if you feel it would be helpful. He is available throughout the whole process of getting your
book to print to discuss any queries you may have.
Our Golden Rule
Everything WRITERSWORLD does must be legally, ethically, morally,
professionally and physically better than any of our self-publishing, print-on-demand
competitors; it is as simple as that, no ‘ifs and buts’—this is our policy.
About Us, and Why We Are Your Best Choice of Publisher
WRITERSWORLD aims to be the ‘gold standard’ of the UK
print-on-demand book publishing industry in the market sector where it operates. There is no
other print-on-demand book publishing company that includes all the following services:
- We arrange for the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) to be issued in the
author’s name, or that of the author’s publishing company, remembering that if the ISBN is
not in your name, or that of your publishing company, it is akin to buying a car and putting
someone else’s name on the registration documents—with the result that you will never have
absolute control over your book. The ISBN is an international identification code which is
unique to a particular edition of a particular title. It serves to facilitate accurate
cataloguing, ordering, accounting, billing and stock control. Your book will be assigned its
individual number and we are one of the few print-on-demand book publishers in the world
that, as part of our publishing packages, will purchase the ISBN for your book in your name.
We purchase in your name the minimum batch of 10 ISBNs so you will have some left for any
other books you publish. Your book’s imprint/copyright page will
state that the book was published in the name you designate ‘in conjunction with
Writersworld’. As the author, you agree that the above designation text will remain on the
imprint/copyright page while the author is listed as the book’s publisher.
- We give authors 90% of their royalties. Our royalty payment system is one of the fairest
and most generous in the entire print-on-demand book publishing industry.
- We permit the author to retain all rights to the cover and content as well as ownership of
the completed digital book files, which are returned to the author at no extra charge.
- We submit a digital copy of the author’s book to Amazon’s ‘Look Inside’ programme so as to
increase sales. When customers look for a book on Amazon they can find the actual words from
inside your book – not just the author, title, and keywords – and will be able to read 20%
of its contents.
- On the author’s behalf, we submit each and every book title to the Legal Deposit
Libraries in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. In the UK, the Legal
Deposit Libraries Act 2003 and the Copyright and Related Rights Act 2000 (Ireland), make it
legally obligatory for publishers and wholesalers in the UK and Irish Republic to deposit
their publications within one month of publication. The six libraries that collectively
maintain the national published archive of the British Isles are: the British Library; the
Oxford Bodleian Library; the Cambridge University Library; the National Library of Scotland
in Edinburgh; the Dublin Library of Trinity College; and the National Library of Wales in
Aberystwyth. This is a four-centuries-old tradition which will make your work available in
the reading rooms, preserved for the benefit of future generations, a part of the national
heritage. Your book will be recorded in the online catalogues of these libraries, all of
which are accessible online, and provide essential research tools for generations to
come.
- We warn the author not to expect to make a full-time living from the retail sales of their
book (the industry is notorious for deluding authors into believing they can). You will make
the most profit from the bulk sales of your book, which you will be able to purchase direct
from the printer at actual print cost.
- We undertake to produce a book in 60 days or less, with the cooperation of the
author.
- We use higher quality paper than is standard for the industry, both for the cover and
inside text pages. We use as a minimum 115 gsm coated paper for the text pages and
300 gsm paper for the paperback covers. In addition, the paper for the text pages of
our books is produced via an independent certification process that ensures that the trees
from which it is produced come from well-managed sources that exclude the risk of using
illegally logged timber, and/or are printed on recycled paper.
- We load our books at our printers with all black and white interior images and photographs
at 300 dpi (dots per inch). Consequently, the printed pages are near photographic
quality. We also publish in full colour which is also comparable to photographic
quality.
- Our book covers are custom designed in full colour and at no time do we use templates.
Templates are where you are offered a series of photographs or illustrations to choose from
and you are asked to ‘plonk’ your name and book title etc. into it. Needless to say, dozens
of other books could look like your book. The quality of our custom-designed covers is
second to none.
- We do not source work outside the United Kingdom or the Republic of Ireland and,
consequently, we do not exploit cheap foreign labour; and our sub-contractors are paid full
rates.
- Our copy editors and book cover designers are highly skilled and experienced in the
self-publishing print-on-demand industry, and you will have direct one-to-one contact with
your designated copy editor and book cover designer. You will also be provided with a
dedicated mobile number so that you can communicate with
WRITERSWORLD at any time within normal working hours with regard to
your book’s progress.
- We guarantee not to ask for more money once the contract has been accepted as it is a
fundamental principle of WRITERSWORLD that there will be no
unexpected add-ons, or extra fees requested from the author once the book is accepted for
publication: all this in an industry notorious for sucking authors in.
- We supply our authors with books at print cost plus shipping. Delivery is guaranteed
within 14 days of placing an order, subject to holidays and weekends.
- We print and ship our clients’ books worldwide and arrange book distribution through all
major UK-based book retailing websites and hundreds of bookshops throughout the United
Kingdom.
- We provide the author with complimentary copies of their book to the value of £185
(at print cost) including shipping costs.
- On the Standard Service, Poetry Book & Children’s Book Service, we provide the author with
a free Amazon Kindle e-book version of their book.
- We provide a comprehensive book promotion service as part of all our book publishing
packages. This involves publicising your book with our press release distribution package,
which includes the professional writing of your release, media targeting and distribution to
all relevant UK media contacts including the press, consumer and trade publications,
broadcast media and online agencies.
- We submit your book title to Nielsen BookData Enhanced Service,
which disseminates information for English language titles electronically to over 3,500
booksellers, Internet retailers and library customers in the UK, and to over 100 countries
worldwide, making your title discoverable to thousands of potential book buyers along with a
description of your book and author biography that will also appear on the book retailers’
websites.
- We insist on the highest ethical standards relating to what we will or will not publish.
We at WRITERSWORLD have gained a reputation for being very
particular as to the type of book we are happy to publish, and very firm about what we will
not; for example we will have nothing to do with the following: any form of pornography;
gratuitous violence; unsupported conspiracy theories; books by misogynists or
misanthropists; books which promote racial or religious intolerance, the subjugation of
women, forced marriages or honour killings; and any books that are otherwise not in tune
with Western values.
- Author protection. In the event of libel action, we undertake to try to protect the
author: in the case of a libel complaint involving or requiring the assistance of
WRITERSWORLD, we will use one of the premier media and libel law
firms in the UK (providing there is no client conflict or they do not refuse to represent
the author). However, as an act of good faith to any complainant and to mitigate any alleged
damage, WRITERSWORLD will withdraw the book from sale until the
matter is resolved. If WRITERSWORLD believes the complainant’s case
or alleged libel to be valid, any required changes to the respective book will be made free
of charge by WRITERSWORLD prior to the book being resubmitted for
publication. In such a case the revised copy will be made available to the libel complainant
for acceptance of any redactions and/or changes.
NB. Please note that WRITERSWORLD is a print-on-demand,
self-publishing book publisher based in the United Kingdom and is not a literary agency, so we
do not accept unsolicited manuscripts or submissions. Please note also, so as to protect our
trademark, it’s always WRITERSWORLD or Writersworld, but never
Writers World. Finally, please note that for the money we charge,
WRITERSWORLD is unable to supply any book shop with physical copies
of your book for them to maintain them as a stock item.
Authors Who Have Self-Published in the Past
Well-known authors who have self-published in the past include John Grisham, Irma Rombauer,
Richard Paul Evans, Jack Canfield, Mark Hensen, James Redfield, Beatrix Potter, Thomas Paine,
Gertrude Stein, Deepak Chopra, Upton Sinclair, Henry David Thoreau, Virginia Woolf, Tom
Clancy, Stephen Crane, Margaret Atwood, L. Frank Baum, William Blake, Ken Blanchard, Robert
Bly, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Lord Byron, Willa Cather, Pat Conroy, E.E. Cummings, W.E.B.
DuBois, Alexander Dumas, T.S. Eliot, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Benjamin Franklin, Zane Grey,
Thomas Hardy, E. Lynn Harris, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ernest Hemingway, Robinson Jeffers, Spencer
Johnson, Stephen King, Rudyard Kipling, Louis L’Amour, D.H. Lawrence, Rod McKuen, Marlo
Morgan, John Muir, Anais Nin, Tom Peters, Edgar Allen Poe, Alexander Pope, Ezra Pound, Marcel
Proust, Irma Rombauer, Carl Sandburg, Robert Service, George Bernard Shaw, Percy Bysshe
Shelley, William Strunk, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Leo Tolstoy, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman.
Obviously, this list has to be understood in perspective as it wasn’t until about 1850 that
mass production brought down the cost of commercially produced books, and it was 1900 before
the 100 titles a year became 6,000 titles a year. In 2014 the UK released more than 22 titles
every hour over the year; so it looks as if book publishing – in one form or another – is here
to stay.
Imprint/Copyright Page
Here is an example of the imprint/copyright page that appears near the front of every
published book:
How Does Print-on-Demand Publishing Work?
Other publishers must guess how many copies of each title will sell. They print them, store
them, and hope their guess is accurate. If the initial print run becomes exhausted, the
publisher makes a decision on whether to commission another print run. In the majority of
cases this would be ‘no’ and would mean that a book becomes out of print and no longer
available. Since the average shelf-life of a book is six months, an author would see years of
hard work disappear. With WRITERSWORLD we can do a print run as small
as a single copy, which means the book is never out of print. Of course, common sense suggests
that one copy would not be cost effective when adding in postage, so the printer has requested
that an author orders a minimum of twenty-five copies.
Test the System
If you wish to see how the system works, as an example take one of our ISBNs e.g.
9781904181002, and see how it is listed at
Amazon, one of the UK’s largest book retailers.
Health Warning
Here are some of the difficulties an author can encounter when travelling the self-publishing
route. Right at the start, before you part with a penny of your money, make sure you have a
fixed-price quotation for the design of the book cover, editing, proof reading and all other
setup costs, so you do not get lured into a bottomless pit of extra charges. That is how some
self-publishing companies work; they will lure you in with what appears to be a low charge and
then start adding on to it.
- Insist that the ISBN is purchased in your name and that your name appears on the
imprint/copyright page as your book’s publisher.
- Make sure that your print-on-demand book publisher knows the difference between editing
and proofreading and that they not only provide the service you really want, but also employ
erudite, skilled and qualified professionals to do the work. Too often in the
print-on-demand industry, editing/proofreading is done by any spare person who thinks they’d
like to have a go at it.
- Make sure that the print-on-demand book publisher deposits a copy of your book with all
six Legal Deposit Libraries. Ask that the publisher provide you with three ISBNs for books
that were published more than eight weeks previously, and then check the books have been
deposited. The deposit of books with the Legal Deposit Libraries is, in our opinion,
indicative of a publisher’s level of responsibility. Contact the British Library on 01937
546268, and the Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries on 01316 234680.
- As you have taken so much time to write your book, we advise that you take a little more
time to make sure your efforts do not go to waste. Insist on having a sample of ISBNs for
books published in the previous month and check them out—not just in the major outlets but
also the smaller ones. We also recommend that you take time to pop into a local book store,
make sure their book search is online, and, armed with an ISBN, try to order the book to
which the ISBN relates as if you were a member of the public. If that does not work, most if
not all of your effort will have been a waste.
- Pin your print-on-demand publisher down as to exactly what each copy of your book will
cost if you order it direct from them (this is another way publishers extract money from
writers).
- Make sure that any contract you examine does not have a clause that allows the company up
to six months to produce your book. Please trust us; you do not want the frustration of
waiting for up to six months to see your book in print. With your cooperation, and given no
unforeseen delays beyond our control, we undertake to get most properly-completed books
published within 60 days.
- Insist that you retain copyright on both the book cover and the content, so that if you
want to change publishers in the future you do not end up with a legal dispute as to who
owns the copyright. Also insist that upon completion of publication, the file relating to
your book is your property. Again, if in the future, for whatever reason, you want to change
publishers, you may not be able to do so if there is a dispute over copyright issues, or you
cannot get the file. It is worth noting that if you publish with a United States company
with whom you later have a dispute, and you live out of the state or country, you may be
required to post a bond to cover the defendant’s legal costs. In the jurisdiction of England
and Wales a bond is not required.
But with WRITERSWORLD there is never a dispute: you know exactly
where you stand, no more and no less—so you can relax, stop worrying, and enjoy the
process.
All Clients Are Treated Equally
WRITERSWORLD treats all its clients alike in that every client pays
exactly the same amount for every publishing service as at the time of placing the contract.
No client gets an extra or special discount, additional complimentary copies or any other
form of preferential terms.
Our Policy of Not Publishing for Under-Eighteen-Year-Olds
When a young person or parent approaches WRITERSWORLD about
publishing a book, they often do not understand that publishing a book for someone under
eighteen can be fraught with problems, mainly because of the parental, legal, ethical, custody
or guardianship situations that might be involved when a parent wants to sign a contract on
behalf of such a person. We would legally and morally be required to determine that in the
case of an under-eighteen-year-old he or she is not subject to a custody proceeding and that
the person approaching us has the right to execute our contract. This is why
WRITERSWORLD cannot accept a contract signed by anyone other than a
person the law considers to be an adult, i.e. eighteen or more years of age, and that person
confirms in our contract that they are eighteen or over.
In fact, as an author taking on a contract under British law, for each book written by an
author under eighteen years of age, we would have to run and pay for a Disclosure and Barring
Service check – which can take a long time – for each person at
WRITERSWORLD, including all the sub-contractors etc. who are involved
in the process of producing that book, as the under-age author would be deemed a new
employer.
Our Use of Sub-Contractors
The self-publishing print-on-demand book publishing industry is both seasonal and
inconsistent as to the number of books that come in to be published at any one time. It is not
therefore economically feasible to have copy editors and book cover designers on the company’s
payroll with all the addendum expense and legal demands that are required, for example, by the
Health & Safety at Work Act. Consequently, we rely on a stable team of vetted sub-contract
copy editors and book cover designers. They all have different specialties and preferences,
are versed in our method of operating, and are self-employed in their own right. As previously
stated, they are all based in the UK or Republic of Ireland and, because of their skills and
individual expertise, are able to produce books to the highest standard. And of course, our
clients have the added benefit of direct access to sub-contractors in the same time zone.
Personal Service at Its Best
Once you have submitted your contract and made the required payment, at the very start of the
process you will be offered a two- to three-hour meeting with the founder and owner of
WRITERSWORLD, Graham Cook, where you will have the opportunity to ask
all those remaining questions you may have about the WRITERSWORLD
book publishing process. You will get some common-sense practical advice about whether to set
up a limited company to promote your book, open a separate bank account, or register for VAT
etc. You will also be provided with a mobile phone number so you can contact Graham Cook at
any time during normal UK working hours to discuss your book’s progress or exchange ideas
regarding your book. These consultations are informal and usually take place at the King’s
Arms Hotel, Woodstock, Oxfordshire. If you wish, we can also meet after your book is published
to go over any points you may have.
Preparing Your Submission
Submitting your book could not be easier. All that we require is that you send it to us via
email or an online file-sharing service, or on a flash drive (memory stick), in the format you
used for your manuscript e.g. Microsoft Word. It is likely you will also wish to submit a
synopsis of the story, an index if required, a dedication, acknowledgements, preface and/or
foreword—and that’s just fine with us.
The author must discuss and agree the book’s size, font and font size at the outset of the
process during early discussion with the designated copy editor, as changing these near or at
completion of the book will create all sorts of reformatting problems, which means taking
extra time. It is suggested that the author prints off a few pages from time to time to check
that the printed page accords with expectations.
If your book contains photographs or illustrations, either in mono or in colour, there is no
extra charge for inserting these. To ensure the best possible print reproduction, digital
images should have a resolution of 300 dpi.
Word Count
The prices we quote for all our publishing services are for books that do not or will not
exceed a word count of 80,000. If you think your book is likely to exceed 80,000 words, you
will need to discuss this with us prior to sending in your contract as there will be an extra
charge of £12 per thousand words or part thereof, paid directly to the sub-contract copy
editor who works on your book. This will need to be paid when the sub-contract editor has
produced the final PDF file and you have signed off on it, and before it goes to the
printer.
To check your book’s word count:
- In Microsoft
Word or LibreOffice
Writer, the word count is continuously displayed in the status bar at the bottom of the
window.
- In Apple Pages, from
the menu choose View > Show Word Count. It is displayed at the bottom of the window.
- In Google Docs, at the top of
the page click Tools > Word count.
Page Count
To estimate a page count for your book, please try our book
sizing system. Choose a font and font size, and insert your word count. You can then
choose different book sizes to get an idea of the minimum number of pages your book will have.
This is of course useful when it comes to estimating print costs.
Book Sizes
We are able to bind any size between A6 and A4, although a standard size would be 234 mm
× 156 mm (Royal). But don’t worry about your book size, as our printers can print to just
about any size you want; simply let us know your preference. The book sizes shown in our
book sizing system, and also those in the Printing Costs section
below, are only a guide, and in no way reflect all the book sizes we can arrange to be
produced and printed.
Recommended Basic Layout Specifications
- Top and bottom margins: this will depend on the layout, but a minimum of 20 mm would
be best.
- Left and right margins: when creating the book’s layout we generally use mirror
margins whereby the margins of the left-hand page are a mirror image of those on the
right-hand page. That is, the inside margins are the same width and the outside margins are
the same width, and basically the inner margin is a little wider than the outer margin. This
is to improve readability in the spine area when the book is open. Most authors will submit
their document with similar left and right margins, but this is no problem as the designated
copy editor will create mirror margins appropriate to the chosen page size after discussion
with the author.
- Spacing: the norm is single spacing i.e. 1 or 1.15 depending on the font, unless the
author requires otherwise and specifically agrees it with the copy editor at the outset of
the process.
- Font(s): in conjunction with the copy editor, the author will need to decide on the font
and font size as near the outset of the process as possible.
- Page size: you will need to discuss and agree your book’s size and specifications with the
designated copy editor at the outset of the process.
Non-Fiction Books
There are particular cautions concerning non-fiction books. Authors and publishers in England
and Wales have to contend with the spectre of libel (in which the plaintive has in general the
burden of proving that any written statements are false), and we now also have a person’s
expectations of the right of privacy under the Human Rights Act 1977.
A Very Simple Explanation of English Defamation, Libel, Slander and Invasion of
Privacy Laws
In law, defamation (also called calumny), libel (for written words),
slander (for spoken words), and vilification, is the communication of a
statement that makes a claim, expressly stated or implied to be factual, that may give an
individual, business, product, group, government or nation a negative image. It is usually,
but not always, a requirement that this claim be false and that the publication is
communicated to someone other than the person defamed (the claimant). In common law
jurisdictions, slander refers to a malicious, false and defamatory spoken statement
or report, while libel refers to any other form of communication such as written
words or images. Most jurisdictions allow legal actions, civil and/or criminal, to deter
various kinds of defamation and retaliate against groundless criticism.
With regard to a person’s expectation of the right of privacy, a landmark legal ruling case
entitled Loreena McKennitt vs Neima Ash actually came about because of a book
WRITERSWORLD declined to publish because there was so much
information about the private life of Canadian songwriter and performer Loreena McKennitt,
based on confidential information gleaned by Neima Ash in very private conversations. We
advised Neima Ash to cut out the sections that Loreena McKennitt objected to. Sadly, she
ignored all our advice and went ahead and published the book herself. She subsequently ended
up in the High Court in London and lost because the court decided she had violated Loreena
McKennitt’s rights of privacy; and she barely escaped bankruptcy as a result of Loreena
McKennitt’s lawyers’ determined efforts to collect on the huge amount of damages and costs
awarded against her by the court.
So if your work of non-fiction is about, or references third party entities or persons, you
absolutely need to submit to them what you have written about them and get their approval
(assuming they are alive, of course), otherwise you may end up on the wrong side of a lawsuit,
either for libel or breaching someone’s rights of privacy, and that is a far from pleasant
position to be in. Loreena McKennitt vs Neima Ash is now the landmark case in
England and Wales.
One of the benefits of a print-on-demand book is that if all the fail-safe systems fail, and
a person complains about the contents of a book, we are able to withdraw the book immediately
from sale or distribution, remove the offending content and replace the file at the printers.
As a result we would be seen as mitigating the damage, which in law is an important issue.
Permissions, Copyright Releases & Accreditations
If any of the above are required, they must be applied for, received by the author, and
embedded into the text file at the time of submitting to
WRITERSWORLD. For the purpose of obtaining advice on permissions,
copyright releases and accreditations, The Society
of Authors may be useful—type into the search box the word ‘permissions’.
In the event that on publication of the book a complaint arises, that any permission or
copyright release has not been properly obtained, or an accreditation is not adequate, the
author shall be liable in full for any costs incurred by WRITERSWORLD
in resolving the dispute.
Poor Man’s Copyright
This refers to the method of using registered dating by the postal service, a notary, lawyer,
public or other highly trusted source to date the intellectual ownership, thereby helping to
establish that the material has been in one’s possession since a particular time. The concept
is based on the notion that, in the event that such intellectual property were to be misused
by a third party, the poor-man’s copyright would at least establish a legally-recognised date
of possession before any proof that a third party might possess. The PMC was originally used
by authors who sent copies of their own work to themselves through the mail without opening
the envelopes, in the hope it would grant them legal protection by establishing a date at
which the work was created. Use of this method may not hold up in court as it is simple for
individuals to pre-send envelopes which can then be used later. The flaws are that there is no
provision in copyright law regarding any such type of protection, and if you have real
copyright concerns, it is best to use the UK
Copyright Service, which charges a minimal fee.
Registering intellectual copyright in the European Union is covered by the EU Copyright
Office.
Our Paper and Cover Standards
The text pages of our standard books are printed on 115 gsm coated paper; also available
is 150 gsm coated. gsm stands for grams per square metre and indicates how dense
the paper is, which generally indicates quality. All paperback covers are printed on
300 gsm cover board.
Hardback books are printed on 150 gsm paper. Hardback covers, which means what would
traditionally be a loose jacket, are mounted on 2.5 mm board and known as a PPC
(printed paper case). This involves extra print costs which you would need to discuss, and
likewise if you require a spiral-bound version.
We can also arrange for the hardback (PPC) version to have a book jacket/dust cover,
but this creates a set of problems, not the least of which is the extra print costs, as the
number of hardback copies to be ordered or required by the book wholesaler will not be known.
Consequently, the number of book jackets to be printed up in advance to match with orders that
may be forthcoming for the hardback version will also not be known. Does
WRITERSWORLD think that having a book jacket is essential? Far from
it; however, we will do all we can to accommodate the author’s wishes.
Printing Costs
Your Book’s Cover
To print, gloss-laminate and bind the cover for a softback book costs 95 pence per book,
and a hardback cover (PPC) costs £3.75.
The following table shows the costs per page, in pence, for books of different sizes,
including monochrome, colour inserts and full-colour books.
Inside Pages: Price Per Page
Book Size | Mono | Colour inserts (less than 20% of book) | Full colour book |
Standard up to 132 × 197 mm | 1p | 5p | 3.5p |
Demy 138 × 216 mm | 1p | 5p | 3.5p |
A5 up to 225 × 150 mm | 1p | 5p | 3.5p |
Royal up to 156 × 234 mm | 1p | 6p | 4.5p |
A4 210 × 297 mm | 1.5p | 7.5p | 5.5p |
Colour Printing—Keeping the Costs as Low as Possible
If your book has over 20% of its pages in colour it becomes a ‘full colour’ book and is
priced accordingly.
Coloured Inserts
There is a print cost to colour inserts as the table shows. If you have colour images/pages
within a mono book, each page will cost extra. A colour image on one side with mono text on
the other is one image. A colour image on both sides of a page is costed as two images. Over
20% colour the book becomes a full-colour book and is priced as per the table.
It is important to remember also that any page with any colour on, no matter how
small, including coloured chapter headings or coloured page numbers, gets classed by the
printer as a colour page. So, if the print cost of your book is an issue, look at each colour
photograph or illustration and ask yourself how best they could be arranged to keep the costs
as low as possible.
Changing a Colour Image to Greyscale
If you plan to produce a monochromatic version of a coloured illustration, it is advisable to
test it out beforehand by setting your home printer to greyscale to check that it reproduces
well, although the result will not be the same quality as when it is professionally printed by
WRITERSWORLD.
Distribution: Getting Your Book Out to the Public
The most important point that many self-published authors appear to overlook is that it is a
pointless exercise if people cannot buy their book. The ready availability and the economical
and reliable distribution of your book is critical. WRITERSWORLD sets
up the distribution for your book to assist the book wholesaler and consequently the retailer
and purchaser.
This is where yet again WRITERSWORLD comes into its own, for
although it is possible to get by without using the services of a book wholesaler, the choices
are very unpalatable. A book wholesaler is the entity that stores copies of the book in a
warehouse, distributes the book to the book retailer, collects the money from the sale of the
book by the retailer, and advances the royalties to WRITERSWORLD who
in turn pays the royalties to the author.
Of course, a self-published author could distribute the book him/herself, but that would
require having to go to the post office and mail off a copy or copies to whoever wanted to buy
them. This then leaves the problem of the author having to raise invoices each and every time
they mail those copies and just hope they get paid.
Another way round the problem is to sign up for the Amazon Advantage programme, the problem
here being that Amazon takes up to 65% of the retail price in royalties. They will also send
in one-off orders, which often means that, after taking into account the cost of postage and
packing and their time, the author actually loses money on every book, and also has to put up
with Amazon’s long-winded and draconian payment terms and exclusivity requirements, which
means being precluded from other outlets.
Of course, there are other print-on-demand publishers who purport to offer distribution, but
they frequently fail to point out that their distribution is not only very limited, but they
also charge an ‘administration’ fee, which inevitably means the self-published author’s
revenues are depleted. WRITERSWORLD alleviates all this complicated
and inefficient mess.
Nielsen BookData Enhanced Listing Service
Our composite range of services includes another agency that is involved in publishing your
book. Nielsen is the entity responsible for issuing your ISBNs and whom we use to provide
the data from which all the major book retailers take their information, such as price and
availability. We provide Nielsen’s BookData Enhanced Listing Service with a description of
your book, paid for by WRITERSWORLD, which will make the book easier
to find by search terms at the very numerous book retailers’ websites, and boost the
opportunity for the book’s sales. We are not aware of any other print-on-demand book publisher
providing this invaluable service.
When an order comes in from a book retailer it automatically goes to Nielsen’s database to
the special account we will have set up for you (this central database thus links the author
with the book retailer and the book wholesaler). From here on in, the order for your book goes
automatically from Nielsen to the book wholesaler we have chosen to distribute our clients’
books, and a copy is literally taken from the rack and mailed to the bookstore or book
purchaser.
NB. It is important to note that if a person goes into a bookshop to purchase your book and
the screen comes up with phrases such as ‘unavailable’ or ‘out of stock’, it does not
mean your book is out of print. Phrases such as these simply mean our wholesaler does not have
copies of your book physically in stock. The customer can still make the purchase and the book
will be printed and distributed by our book wholesaler to the retailer.
Later in this document is a step-by-step guide to the book
retailing process.
Our Book Wholesaler
The relationship WRITERSWORLD has with its book wholesaler is unique
as their normal policy is not to deal with authors or publishers who have fewer than four
titles in their inventory. However, by virtue of the fact that we afford our clients the
dignity and right to have the ISBN of their book in their own name, as a result they become
book publishers in their own right and fall outside our book wholesaler’s normal policy which
would make it difficult to engage their distribution services.
Would you please be aware that the fact that our book wholesaler has granted
WRITERSWORLD a concession and has agreed to distribute our clients’
books is a privilege granted by them and not a right. Our book wholesaler is based in the UK
and WRITERSWORLD greatly values their support to its clients.
Royalties
Having taken account of the foregoing, let’s explain the royalty formula.
The retail price of your book, less the book retailer’s sales commission of 25%, less our
book wholesaler’s commission of 15% of the retail price, less printing costs =
YOUR ROYALTY
In other words, the book retailer who sold the book on your behalf, and the book wholesaler
who made the book available to them, deduct their combined commission of 40% from the retail
price of your book.
It is very clear that neither WRITERSWORLD nor the author could pack
and mail a copy of a book for the amount that our book wholesaler charges, which is
approximately £1.50 for a book retailing at £9.99.
The process as to payment of royalties is as follows:
- When you have approved your sample copy, which will be sent to you direct from the
printer, we start the ball rolling by sending our book wholesaler five complimentary copies
of your book. As a consequence, your book will be treated by the wholesaler as an in-stock
book, and appear the same at the many thousands of book retailers’ websites and bookshops
throughout the world.
- After a book’s publication date, WRITERSWORLD will be the
direct and only liaison between the author/publisher and our book wholesaler in order
to try and persuade them to stock further copies of your book. If successful, this will
involve our book wholesaler ordering bulk copies of the author/publisher’s book through
WRITERSWORLD via email. In turn,
WRITERSWORLD will forward our book wholesaler’s orders on to the
author/publisher who will then order them from the respective printer and pay for them. The
printer will ship the order to our book wholesaler using a specially designed delivery note.
As WRITERSWORLD will provide you with complimentary copies to the
value of £185 (at print cost) you can, if you wish, use these initially to supply our
wholesaler. We will provide you with a delivery note that meets their requirements.
- You can keep an eye on how many copies of your book have been sold via retail outlets and
distributed by our book wholesaler by going to the wholesaler’s website and typing in your
ISBN (without hyphens or spaces) in the Search box on their home page. The search results
will tell you how many copies of your book have been delivered by our wholesaler to book
retailers by the number of copies of your book they still have on their racks or shelves.
For example, if they have had 100 copies and have 20 left, they have distributed 80 of your
books.
- As for the authors/publishers being paid by our book wholesaler for the books they
hopefully will have ordered through WRITERSWORLD, in the past a
very small minority of clients have jeopardised this process, letting other
authors/publishers and WRITERSWORLD down by their activities. These
activities have involved our book wholesaler having to contend with authors/publishers
‘demanding’ they stock their books and even at times incurring verbal abuse; books being
shipped to them that they had never ordered; and even being invoiced for books they still
had in stock and not distributed etc. Our book wholesaler, while most reasonable, is not a
charity and it will be clear to the majority of authors that they cannot pay out for books
they have stocked but which have not been sold and so not distributed.
- Because of this very small number of authors/publishers who have unrealistic expectations,
WRITERSWORLD has had to tighten up its method of royalty payment,
which is now as follows. Each month WRITERSWORLD receives a list of
all its clients whose books have been distributed by our book wholesaler, showing the number
of titles distributed by them during the previous month and the royalties owed on each book
title, taking into account the five complimentary copies sent to them by
WRITERSWORLD.
- As stated already, the author/publisher is able to establish how many copies of their book
have been distributed by our book wholesaler at any time by going to their website and
typing the respective ISBN into the Search box (no hyphens or spaces). Additionally, the
author/publisher is welcome to telephone WRITERSWORLD to get the
distribution figures. We invoice our book wholesaler en bloc on behalf of all our
authors/publishers and every quarter we pay each author/publisher 90% of what our wholesaler
has paid us for the respective book title, and we do so ‘bank to bank’. Of course, after a
period of time we will use our best endeavours to persuade our book wholesaler to allow you
to have a direct account, which is in our interests too.
Book Retailing Process Step by Step
- The customer purchases a copy of your book from a bookshop or Internet book retailer: the
customer orders and pays for the book and 25% of the book’s retail price is deducted by the
retailer from the purchase money paid to them.
- The wholesaler receives the order from the bookshop or Internet book retailer: the
wholesaler, through the database system set up by WRITERSWORLD,
gets the order from the bookshop or Internet book retailer who sends an order to
WRITERSWORLD to supply the wholesaler with the required number of
books. By this time the wholesaler will have in stock the five complimentary copies which
WRITERSWORLD will have paid to have printed out of the fee the
author has paid to WRITERSWORLD.
- The wholesaler ensures they have adequate stock levels of your book, dependent on sales
volume: if and when the wholesaler does not have enough copies of your book in stock and
requires more, the wholesaler will send a purchase order to
WRITERSWORLD who will then prepare a delivery note to meet the
order. WRITERSWORLD then forwards the delivery note to both the
printer and the author. The printer sends a quote by email to the author, who pays the
printer direct.
- The printer delivers to the wholesaler books that have been ordered by them: once the
printer has been paid by the author, the printer will deliver the books to the wholesaler
along with a copy of the delivery note prepared by WRITERSWORLD,
upon receipt of which the wholesaler will deliver the books to the respective book
retailer(s). At this time the wholesaler may place a further order with
WRITERSWORLD to either replenish or increase the numbers of a
particular book in stock.
- The wholesaler pays the author’s royalties directly to
WRITERSWORLD: at the end of each month the wholesaler sends
WRITERSWORLD a cumulative statement listing all the book
titles produced by WRITERSWORLD that have been distributed that
particular month. This cumulative statement shows the money owed to
WRITERSWORLD on behalf of its authors, less 15% of each book’s
retail price, which is the fee the wholesaler charges for collecting the author’s money from
the book retailer(s) and delivering the book or books to the respective book
retailer(s).
- WRITERSWORLD disseminates information provided to it by the
wholesaler and on a quarterly basis provides all the information to the author about the
number of books distributed, and consequently the royalties owed in a given monthly period.
The author raises an invoice on WRITERSWORLD for the sum total of
the quarterly royalties owed to the author, and each quarter
WRITERSWORLD pays to the author 90% of the money paid to them by
the wholesaler, via a bank-to-bank payment direct to the author.
We will publicise your book with our press release distribution package, which includes the
professional writing of your release, media targeting and distribution to all relevant UK
media contacts including the press, consumer and trade publications, broadcast media and
online agencies. Our press releases go out to approximately 230 countries with a selection
from a database of 1.7 million media contacts with over 175,000 media contacts in the UK
alone.
With Us, Authors Buy Copies of Their Books at ‘Print Cost’ Plus
Delivery Charge
We will set up an account direct with the printer, load your files into your account and will
not take a penny from your in royalties or on the copies of your book you buy direct from the
printer. Consider the idea of an author who has paid to have a book published but is not able
to buy books direct from the printer at cost plus shipping! If you paid to have your house
painted, would you allow the painter to charge you money when people looked at it? Of course
you wouldn’t.
The norm in the print-on-demand book publishing industry is to mark up the cost of the books
that the authors buy by 25% of the retail price—for buying copies of their own book! Let’s
give an example of a book we have published, ‘Cotswold Memoir’, which retails for £9.99. The
author orders 100 copies of the book which she receives at a print cost of £2.78 per copy,
thus costing her a total of £278. If she were to use the services of a self-publishing
company that charges print cost + 25% of retail, the self-same quantity of books would cost
her £527.75, and of course the books would not be of the same print quality as
WRITERSWORLD or indeed even have her, the author’s own ISBN on
them.
Supporting Your Local Bookshop
On average in the UK, two local bookshops a week are going out of business. In 2009 Borders,
a huge book retailer, went out of business, and in 2010 the largest book chain in the Republic
of Ireland went into administration. This brings us on to supporting your own local bookshop,
which can often supply a book as fast and at the same price as the huge Internet retailing
giants, and of course, if there is a problem, you will have a real live human being to help
you. Local bookshop personnel are usually also able to give advice about books generally, in
particular those that involve the local area, or the rural and urban infrastructure, and many
support book reading groups and bring in authors to talk about their work to the public.
Important Notes
No matter which company you choose to publish your book, if you are not prepared or are
unable to promote your book, it is unlikely you will recover the cost of publishing your book
from the royalties of retail book sales. Options include: contacting local bookshops to stock
your books and/or offer you book-signings; doing local radio and newspaper interviews;
arranging book launches; publicising your book in magazines/journals and so on. We will assist
all we can, without promise, to arrange local book signings in the UK with Waterstones.
Do not be persuaded by claims from other print-on-demand book publishers that you will make a
full-time living from the royalties on Internet retail sales of your book as the volumes and
margins are simply not there.
Ask yourself if you would even be truthfully informed, or indeed have direct knowledge from
the printer as to how many copies of your book were actually sold and printed via any
print-on-demand Internet retail sales. Then ask yourself why that print-on-demand book
publisher needs to insert themselves into the royalty payment process when, as with
WRITERSWORLD, you could have your own ISBN and be listed as your
book’s publisher, have the dignity of direct access to your book’s wholesaler, know at all
times how many copies of your book have been sold and directly receive 90% of any
royalties.
NB. Something to be aware of if you are going to send out copies of your book to reviewers:
do buy a rubber stamp stating BOOK REVIEW: COPY NOT FOR SALE, and put this stamp on the
imprint page, because it has come to our attention that some book reviewers are parcelling up
books sent for review and selling them off to businesses such as Amazon.
Our Copy Editing Process
With this service, in addition to having the cover designed and before your book is submitted
to our printers, it will be worked on by one of our copy editors. We want your book not only
to look attractive but to be able to convey its information to the intended readership as
easily and effectively as possible. Your copy editor will help you consider things such as the
size of your book, its formatting and layout, the best font to use, styles of chapter
headings, spacing between paragraphs, headers, footers, page numbering, table of contents,
possible bibliography or index, and so on. They will then go on to perform essential checks
for spelling and grammar errors, punctuation, correctness of page and chapter layout, and so
on. Most importantly, they consider your book from the point of view of the reader: does the
story flow from one event to the next? What happened to a certain character? Is there
consistency etc.? For factual or educational books, are the references and quotations correct?
Is it accurate in every respect? Does it flow logically?
Sometimes, for the content to be coherent or to read well, it requires the copy editor to
reword, add, or insert text, but this is always in the author’s voice. Any reworking
will have all the appearance of being written by you, as of course it is not intended that our
copy editors should rewrite your book, and any changes or additions will be agreed with you
along the way.
This process usually involves several rounds of exchanging files of latest draft versions
between you and the copy editor. We have found that most books require at the least two or
three draft versions, each of which advances the work another step closer to the finished
book.
If an index is to be added, this will be the very last process once all the text and
pagination (page numbering) has been agreed, since subsequent changes to the text will affect
the index too. Please note there is an extra fee of £250 to be paid by the author in advance
direct to the copy editor if creating an index is required. This charge covers the first 250
words or phrases to be indexed and an additional charge of £1 per word or phrase
thereafter.
If logistically possible, we will arrange for you to meet your designated copy editor in
person at the very outset of the process. If not, he or she will keep in contact with you by
telephone and/or email and will provide you with a sample draft early on to make sure he or
she is going in the right direction with your book. Your book cover designer will also keep in
touch with you throughout your book’s production process.
We appreciate it is likely you have spent years of work on your book, so you may well view
the prospect of reading over several more versions with less than whole-hearted enthusiasm! At
WRITERSWORLD we view this process as extremely important, however,
and as you have entrusted us with publishing your book, the finished book should reflect our
highest standards, so please help our copy editors to help you! Your readers will thank
you.
At the very end of the book-publishing process, after all the copy editing opportunities have
been exhausted and the author is happy with the final Word file, a PDF (portable document
format) file is created and sent to the printer. A sample copy is then produced, which exactly
replicates the book as it will appear after production.
Designing Your Book’s Cover
All the book cover and book jacket designers that WRITERSWORLD uses
have the required skills, experience and expertise to do the important task of the
one-glimpse-and-it-sells test for the cover of your book. You do not want your self-published
book to appear amateurish or homemade, and all our graphic designers, who are very
knowledgeable about the book printing/publishing industry, have very high levels of skills and
creativity, as well as the most up-to-date software and access to stock photography so as to
make your book’s cover stand out from all the rest.
After we have received your contract and payment you will be contacted directly by one of our
designated book cover designers who will ask you to provide your careful thoughts as to how
you want your book cover to look, as this is entirely down to you. Whether you have ideas,
thoughts, a photograph or illustration, they can be incorporated into the design of your
book’s cover, and of course you can make changes and corrections to your original thoughts or
ideas, within reason, until you are fully satisfied with your cover’s final look. You will
also need to give some thought to what text you would like on the back cover that will give
the public some indication of the content of the book.
Putting Your Photograph on Your Book’s Cover
Of course, most celebrities display their photograph on a book cover, or inside, but these
people are already well-known and have a recognised following. Non-published authors are not
in general marketing themselves to an existing audience, therefore including personal images
here is unlikely to present any significant gain and may even risk a potential
purchaser/reader putting your book down in favour of another. Whether we like it or not, we
need to recognise that we live in a world where prejudice and bias are no strangers, and
WRITERSWORLD would encourage you to consider that the benefits to
leaving these images out may outweigh the risks of inclusion.
Our Publishing Fees Policy
It is the defined policy of WRITERSWORLD that after you have placed
your contract, pursuant to the conditions outlined in our Self-Publishing Guide and our
contract terms and conditions (including prior agreement on additional payment for books with
a word count of over 80,000 words, indexing etc.) there will be no additional charges.
If upon receipt of the complete file relating to your book we think from the outset your book
is not suitable for WRITERSWORLD to publish, we will refund any money
you have paid us in full.
Book Publishing Process Step by Step
- Author sends contract and files to WRITERSWORLD. Contract
returned to author via email.
- WRITERSWORLD sends author International Standard Book Number
(ISBN).
- WRITERSWORLD selects the appropriate sub-contract copy editor and
book cover designer.
- Copy editor and book cover designer establish direct contact with author and work
directly with author on the respective tasks.
- WRITERSWORLD receives completed ISBN application form from the
author, creates imprint/copyright page, forwards the form to Nielsen, the ISBN agency, and
pays the registration fee on behalf of the author.
- Author receives the list of their 10 ISBNs. WRITERSWORLD begins
to enter information into the database, from which all book retailers take their information
about a particular book.
- Once the author has approved the sample copy of their book,
WRITERSWORLD arranges with the printer to send five complimentary
copies to the book wholesaler, six copies to the Legal Deposit Libraries and complimentary
copies to the value of £185 to the author.
- WRITERSWORLD submits the book cover and text files to Amazon’s
Look Inside programme.
Our Standard Book Publishing Service
Payment plans are available—please contact us for details.
Fee: £2,750 (VAT exempt)
Included in the price of this service, our professional editing team will check for and
correct any inconsistencies, amend any spelling, punctuation or grammatical errors, and will
also provide layout and cover design services. This way you get the benefit of a properly
designed and laid out, visually pleasing, professional quality book, not something that looks
like a bound word-processor document as is the case with some self-publishing companies.
We will create a high-quality, full-colour cover, custom designed by our skilled jacket
artists in consultation with you. Simply put, we will not palm you off with a book cover based
on a template that is used over and over again with just a different title and author’s name
on it. The whole team will liaise with you throughout the process and revisions will be made
only with your approval. You decide on your own preferred retail price for your book, based on
manufacturing costs as determined once the design is completed. Given that all internal
illustration work is completed to an acceptably high standard when submitted to us, and that
no unforeseen delays occur, the time frame from acceptance of submission to publication can be
60 days.
On acceptance of your book for publication, and receipt of the completed text and your
payment, we are committed to undertake and complete the following:
- Purchase the ISBN in your name with your name appearing on the imprint/copyright page as
your book’s publisher. As we pay for a minimum batch of 10 ISBNs in your name, you will have
plenty in reserve for your later books, all permanently registered to you.
- Produce your book in 60 days (subject to your cooperation).
- Custom design your book, incorporating your own thoughts and ideas.
- Copy edit your book.
- Load and submit your book to numerous worldwide databases to increase availability via the
Internet and thousands of retail outlets.
- Distribute copies to the Legal Deposit Libraries
- Submit your book to Amazon’s Look Inside programme, which will mean that a person doing a
search by subject matter may pick up your name, book title or content and be able to read
20% of its contents.
- Supply our book wholesaler with five complimentary copies of your book, ensuring that it
appears as available for immediate delivery at Amazon and other book retailers and not as
out of stock or with an extended delivery time. The approximate cost of this is £45
including postage, which we pay for out of the publishing fee.
- Provide you with complimentary copies of your book to the value of £185 including shipping
costs.
- Provide you with a free Amazon Kindle e-book version of your book
and Amazon Kindle set up service and e-book distribution.
- Produce a hardback version of your book. This involves: using one of your spare ISBNs;
changing the imprint/copyright page plus the bar code on the back cover to reflect the new
ISBN; making another set of six legal deposits and sending five introductory copies to the
book wholesaler, plus a copy to you; these are paid for by
WRITERSWORLD up to the value of £35, and of course you will receive
90% of the royalties on this version of your book. Any requirement for further such copies
will be paid for and ordered in the same way as for further soft cover copies.
Poetry Book & Children’s Book Packages
Payment plans are available—please contact us for details.
Fee: £2,499 (VAT exempt)
As there is little copy editing with a poetry book and they tend to have a low page count, we
are able to offer all of the services we offer with our standard service but at a lower
cost.
Budget Package
Fee: £999 (VAT exempt)
New in 2022: We realise there are authors who either cannot afford our
all-inclusive publishing packages or do not require some of the services that are integral to
those packages. We invite you to read details of our new budget
publishing package or call us on 0800 121 4960 to discuss this exciting offering.
Having Your Book Spiral-Bound
If it better suits your book’s purpose, it is possible to produce a spiral-bound version of
your book in place of the hardback copies. To do this we use one of your nine spare ISBNs;
change the imprint/copyright page plus the bar code on the back cover to reflect the new ISBN;
make another set of six legal deposits; and send five introductory copies to the book
wholesaler, plus a copy to you. These are also paid for WRITERSWORLD
and of course you will receive 90% of the royalties on this version of your book. Any
requirement for further such copies will be paid for and ordered in the same way as for
further soft cover copies.
Amazon Kindle E-Book Service
Amazon Kindle now represents over 60% of the worldwide e-book market, and Waterstones, the
UK’s largest book retailer, is selling the Kindle through its bookshops and website. Our
perspective as to where the e-book market is heading is that Amazon’s Kindle is achieving
market dominance. WRITERSWORLD now offers, therefore, a worldwide
Amazon Kindle setup service and e-book distribution for all its authors. This service provides
the opportunity for clients to earn extra income and at the same time gain marketing
opportunities. As for the ISBN you will need for your Amazon Kindle e-book, you will be able
to use one of the spare numbers we purchase on your behalf when you publish your conventional
book with WRITERSWORLD.
We used to offer our e-book service with outlets other than Amazon Kindle and found that,
apart from the complexity of organising the payment of royalties, the actual royalties paid to
our clients were derisory and frankly not worth the effort. We have come to the conclusion
that the issue of Amazon Kindle vs. its competitors is akin to CDs vs. cassette tapes.
We are now able to set up a free Amazon Kindle account for you and the royalties will be paid
to you direct by Amazon Kindle.
Printers & Printing Overseas
Would you please note that producing/publishing a book is a totally different
function to printing a book. Whereas the cost of printing a book depends on how many
copies are being printed, the cost of producing or publishing a book is the same whether one
or hundreds of copies are to be printed. WRITERSWORLD is a book
production company and not a book printer, although of course it has
arrangements with printing companies. In simple terms we are the builder who builds a house
and then arranges for the supply of utilities to bring the house to life. Similarly, we
produce a book file and then arrange with the printer to do the printing; what we do is very
different from what the printer does and vice versa.
As regards getting a book printed overseas, although WRITERSWORLD
has print arrangements with some printers outside the UK, if you wish to print in any other
country we will arrange to transfer copies of your digital files to any printer of your choice
overseas, at no cost to you as you will own all the rights to your book’s digital files.
WRITERSWORLD has never asked for or received money, gifts, or cash
from any printer it has used or recommended and does not belong to any book retailer affiliate
programme, nor does it derive any profit from the sale of any book, nor receive any money or
gifts from any book wholesaler or wholesaler it uses or recommends.
Attention Tax Payers
In the United Kingdom
If your book is directly related to your business, then the cost of publishing your book,
i.e. what you pay WRITERSWORLD, should be fully tax deductible as a
business expense, and if you file self-assessment tax returns you may wish to discuss this
possibility with whoever compiles your tax returns.
In the United States
If you file your tax returns with the US Inland Revenue, you may be entitled to a tax
deduction for the cost of setting up your book with us, i.e. our publishing fees. After you
have entered into a contract with us and paid the publishing fee, if you reside outside the
United Kingdom you may also be entitled to a tax deduction for the direct and legitimate
expense of coming to the UK to discuss with us the book production process. On both points,
why not discuss this possibility with your State and Federal tax preparer to see if Uncle Sam
can indirectly and legitimately assist you financially to publish a book.
In Other Parts of the World
We cannot offer any input as to possible tax write-offs or deductions you might make if you
live elsewhere in the world. All we can advise is that you take advice from whoever prepares
your tax returns.
Public Lending Right
Whether you use WRITERSWORLD or not, we recommend that you register
with the UK-based Public Lending Right office (part of the
British Library) which through its website aims to provide published authors with an easy
route to register for ‘PLR’, which is a legal right to payment from the UK government each
time an author’s books are borrowed from UK public libraries. They provide further details of
the work they do through the Media Centre at their website, which gives a unique insight into
the nation’s book-borrowing tastes from data collected from libraries across the UK.
To Conclude
Here are the five essential points we think you should not give any ground on if you want to
retain control over your book, maximise your revenues and avoid the possibility of being
exploited down the line.
Insist that:
- Your book’s ISBN is registered in your name and your name only.
- You can buy copies of your book direct from the printer at print cost.
- You receive 90% of any royalties on retail book sales.
- You personally retain the full copyright on your book’s cover design and finished
content.
- You are provided on publication with a copy of all your book’s digital files for both the
book’s cover and text file.
Phew! You have got this far having read all our bumf, and hopefully you will have learned a
plethora of things regarding the processes, pitfalls and opportunities involved in
self-publishing a book.
We hope that by this stage you have also come to the conclusion that
WRITERSWORLD is best placed to take care of the process for you, and
by extension take care of you, the author, too.
Testimonials
What follows is a sample from our collection of more than two
hundred testimonials from authors who’ve published with us over the years.
Peggy Jones, author of The Small World I Ching
“Having worked with Graham Cook and his WRITERSWORLD team on my
first book, I didn’t think twice before deciding to work with them again on The Small
World I Ching. The experience both times has been one of warm collaboration and support.
Throughout the entire process I was consulted on every aspect of the finished book and how
I envisioned it. Ian Large and Jag Lall never hassled me, making me feel the book was always
mine to shape as I wished, but they also offered guidance when I needed it.
“When I published with an academic publisher years ago, I was left with a feeling that my
book had been taken from me, that I had little or no choice about the final product, and
that whoever was managing it was not particularly interested in my views. The experience
left me feeling bruised. However, my experience with WRITERSWORLD has
been the complete opposite, and I would recommend them to anybody seeking to see their book in
print.”
Jon Kaufman, author of Alphabet Soup
“The self-publishing industry doesn’t have the greatest of reputations. A money making machine
and very little after-sales service. I’m happy to report that
WRITERSWORLD has bucked that trend. From the very beginning, there
has been an attention to detail and a recognition of individual needs that has been pleasantly
surprising. The quality of the finished product is excellent and when they say they are going
to do something, they do it. I would be happy to recommend this UK based company to anyone
contemplating their first foray into the murky and complex world of self-publishing.”
Judith Nicol, author of Red Couch in the Sky
“When I was contemplating self-publishing, I had no real idea what it involved and wanted a
service whereby I was guided through the process professionally without having to worry.
WRITERSWORLD delivered this in spades and delivered a high quality
product. The copy editor Ian Large was excellent as was Jag Lall the book cover designer.
Everything was managed to a tight timeframe and yet I was never hurried. When I had questions
they were patiently answered. The service is not cheap but I have been very happy with its
value for money.”
Nick Metcalfe, author of Honours, Decorations, and Medals to The Royal Corps of Signals for
Gallantry & Distinguished Service 1920–2020
“I published my first book with the team at WRITERSWORLD in 2012 and
my second in 2014. My latest book took five years to research and write and there was no doubt
in my mind that there was only one route for
publication—WRITERSWORLD. Graham Cook’s guide for writers is
available on the WRITERSWORLD website and is a ‘must read’ for anyone
embarking on self-publication. He provides everything a writer needs at a most reasonable
cost: editing and proofing, cover design, the preparation of the manuscript and cover for
printing, access to a first-class print-on-demand company, and, most importantly, access to a
distributor and to the online marketplace. He also provides a personal touch that is very
reassuring and which guarantees that any problems are swiftly resolved.
“My writing projects are ‘niche’—they are not attractive prospects for a conventional
publishing house—but with WRITERSWORLD they have all been taken from
early imaginings to reality and I could not be happier with the final results.”
Adam Hartopp, author of Murder by Cluedo
“Deciding upon which publisher to use was down to authors’ testimonials. For me,
WRITERSWORLD came out top of the class. The subsequent engagement and
attention to detail from Graham Cook, copy editor Ian Large and book cover designer Jag Lall
was first class, and turned my idea into a finished article which was better than I could ever
imagine. Consequently, I would highly recommend WRITERSWORLD as a
must for any self-publisher.”