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Writersworld

Self Publishing Guide

12 March, 2019

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A GENERAL STATEMENT

The font size of this document has been selected to assist those readers who may have a visual impairment, and also to make for greater ease of reading on an e-book device/e-book reader.

Whether you decide to use WRITERSWORLD or not, there is a wealth of information in this PDF file that may save you a lot of grief, time and money down the line. This PDF file 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.

Please be aware that it takes the same amount of time, effort and set-up costs for WRITERSWORLD to be able to produce and print off one copy of a book as it does for multiple copies.

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 of course 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:

1. 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 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 x 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.

2. We give authors 90% of their royalties. Our royalty payment system is the fairest and most generous in the entire print-on-demand book publishing industry.

3. We permit the author to retain all rights to the cover and contentas well as ownership of the completed digital book files which are returned to the author at no extra charge.

4. We submit a digital copy of the author’s book to Amazon’s ‘Search inside this book’ 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.

5. 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 on the World Wide Web, and provide essential research tools for generations to come.

6. We warn the author not to expect to make a full or part-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.

7. We undertake to produce a book in 60 days or less, with the cooperation of the author.

8. The paper we use is higher quality than is standard for the industry, both for the cover and inside text or pages. We use as a minimum 115 gsm silk paper for the text pages and 350gsm 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.

9. Our books are loaded at our printers with all black and white interior images and photographs at up to 300 dpi (dots per inch) as opposed to the industry norm of 300 dpi. Consequently, given a high-standard original illustration, the result is very near photographic quality. We also publish in full colour.

10. 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.

11. 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.

12. 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.

13. 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.

14. Our authors are supplied with books at print costs plus shipping. Delivery is guaranteed within 14 days of placing an order, subject to holidays and weekends.

15. We print and ship our clients' books worldwide and arrange book distribution through all major UK-based book retailing websites and hundreds of book shops throughout the United Kingdom.

16. We provide the author with complimentary copies of their book to the value of £185 including shipping costs.

17. On the Standard Service, Poetry Book Service & Children's Book Service, we provide the author with a FREE AMAZON KINDLE E-BOOK version of their book. See page 30 for more information about this additional service.

18. 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.

19. Our composite range of services includes a description of the book at Nielsen Book Data Enhanced Service paid for by WRITERSWORLD , which will make the book easier to find by search terms at the 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.

20. We insist on the highest ethical standards relating to what we will or will not publish. In addition to these high standards, 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; books by misogynists or misanthropists; unsupported conspiracy theories; gratuitous violence; books which promote racial or religious intolerance; any books that support the subjugation of women; forced marriages; honour killings; any books that are not in tune with Western values.

21. 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. It is a fundamental right of any person to determine that any libel was wilful, it will offer no assistance to the author and accept no liability on behalf of the author.

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.

It is also important to 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 as a stock item.

AUTHORS WHO HAVE SELF-PUBLISHED IN THE PAST

John Grisham, L. Ron Hubbard, 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, Walt Whitman.

Obviously, this list of authors who have self-published 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.

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 set up 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 (0)1316 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). Do all of this before you spend a single penny with any book publisher.

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 you know exactly where you stand, no more and no less — so you can relax, stop worrying, and enjoy the process!

ALL WRITERSWORLD 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. over eighteen 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 Kings Arms Hotel, Woodstock, Oxfordshire (see CONSULTATION). If you wish, we can also meet after your book is published to go over any points you may have.

PREPARING YOUR SUBMISSION TO WRITERSWORLD

Submitting your book could not be easier. All that we require is that your book is sent to us on a disk or as an e-mail attachment 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 good print reproduction quality, digital images should preferably have a resolution of 300 dpi for best possible results.

It is important to note that, with regard to all our publishing services, the prices we quote relate to submitted books that do not or will notexceed a word count of 80,000 (see next section for how to calculate your document’s word count). 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 respective printer.

HOW TO CALCULATE A WORD COUNT FOR YOUR BOOK

With your Word document open, go to the Menu bar at the top of your screen and select Tools or Review. Click on Word Count from the drop-down menu and you will see all the statistics for your document including the word count.

HOW TO ESTIMATE A PAGE COUNT FOR YOUR BOOK

Click on www.writersworld.co.uk/booksize.asp, or go to the WRITERSWORLD website and click on Free book sizing system. Choose a font and font size and insert your word count. You can then choose different book sizes so as 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 234mm x 156mm (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 estimating system, and also those in our 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

Minimum top margin: this would depend on the layout but at least 20mm would be best.

Minimum bottom margin: as above

Left & 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 individual size and specifications with the designated copy editor at the outset of the process.

"MY BOOK IS READY FOR PUBLISHING AS IT IS . . ."

We used to have a service whereby, in the case of a book that had not been published before, we would accept a ‘complete’ text file and book cover from a client on the basis that our sole role here would be to ensure that the book was published and that printing arrangements were taken care of. Hence this service cost a lot less than if we were involved in designing the book’s cover and were responsible for the copy editing and formatting.

This system proved most unsatisfactory given that we expected the book cover and text file to arrive in pristine condition. With only one exception books would arrive at WRITERSWORLD to a standard that we could not accept as publishable manuscripts. We often had to invest considerable time and effort addressing a whole spectrum of shortcomings in these files in order to maintain our high standards and meet client deadlines, thereby incurring a range of additional expense and substantial loss of profit.

WRITERSWORLD therefore recently terminated this service due to the reasons outlined above. Unless someone has worked in this arena previously, it is unlikely they will have the requisite expertise to prepare a book in a format that will prove acceptable for publishing/printing.

In addition to the more obvious likely shortcomings, WRITERSWORLD has also to consider libel issues that may arise, as well as the privacy rights of third parties, so it’s crucial we know what is in a book prior to becoming involved in its publication; our experienced copy editors, while not involved in the legal profession, can as lay persons serve as one reasonable line of protection for all concerned.

NON-FICTION BOOKS

There are particular cautions concerning non-fiction books as 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 song-writer 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; 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, this link may be useful www.societyofauthors.org. 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 by placing the envelopes inside. 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 property copyright in the European Union is covered by the EU Copyright Office.

OUR PAPER AND COVER STANDARDS INCLUDING SPIRAL-BOUND, HARDBACK & LOOSE JACKET

As a brief summary, the text pages of our standard books are printed on magnificent 115gsm silk paper at no extra cost (the industry standard is 80gsm in an off-white yellowish colour); 100gsm arctic gloss coated; 100gsm arctic matt coated; 130gsm arctic gloss coated; and 140gsm arctic gloss coated (the latter two at extra print cost); or off-white 90gsm 18-volume book wove: the choice is yours. ‘Gsm’ stands for ‘grams per square metre’ and indicates how dense the paper is, which generally indicates quality.

If required, we are also able to print on 60, 70, 80, 120 and 130gsm ultra-white bond or 120gsm art paper, so there is plenty to choose from. All paperback book covers are printed on 350gsm paper which results in a much thicker cover than is offered by any other print-on-demand book publisher. If the above looks a bit complicated, we would be more than pleased for you to visit one of our printers so you can make your choice based on looking at the samples they have in stock.

We are able to print full-colour photographs and illustrations etc. on the inside pages up to 300dpi (dots per inch), as well as standard black and white monochrome.

We also do hardback covers, which means that what would traditionally be a loose jacket is mounted to boards 2.5mm thick and known as a PPC (Printed Paper Case). This involves extra costs which you would need to discuss, and likewise if you require a spiral-bound version (see page 30).

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 95pence 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.

COLOUR PRINTING - keeping the costs as low as possible

1. If your book has over 20% of its pages in colour it becomes a ‘full colour’ book and is priced accordingly.

2. Coloured inserts

There is a print cost to colour inserts as the table shows.

If you have colour pages within a mono book each page will cost extra, as colour pages have to be printed on a different machine and then merged with the pages of mono (black and white) text. This applies to each side of the page, even if the back is mono. This is why it is cheaper if you have your colour inserts on both sides of the page. If, however, you have colour on one side and a blank page on the other, there is no charge for the blank page.

This table shows the costs per page, in pence, for books of different sizes, including monochromatic, colour inserts, and full colour books.

WRITERSWORLD	Printing costs: PENCE per page	Printing costs: PENCE per page	Printing costs: PENCE per page
BOOK SIZE	Mono	Colour inserts up to 20% of total page count	Full colour book
STANDARD up top to 132 x 197mm	1p	5p	3.5p
DEMY 138 x 216mm	1p	5p	3.5p
A5 up to 225 x 150mm	1p	5p	3.5p
Royal Up to 156 x 234mm	1p	6p	4.5p
A4 210 x 297mm	1.5p	7.5p	5.5p

3. Changing a coloured illustration 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.

On the next page is an example of the greyscale version of a colour image

DISTRIBUTION — GETTING YOUR BOOK OUT TO THE PUBLIC

The most important point that most self-published authors appear to overlook is that it is a pointless exercise if people cannot buy their book. This is where the ready availability and the economical and reliable distribution of your book is critical. WRITERSWORLD not only sets up the distribution for your book to assist the book wholesaler and consequently the book retailer and book purchaser, we also send an ADVANCE INFORMATION SHEET to the book wholesaler along with a copy of the book’s front cover.

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 & 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 BOOK DATA ENHANCED LISTING SERVICE

Our composite range of services includes another agency that is involved in publishing your book; Nielsen’s 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 Book Data 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’s 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.

 

The BOOK RETAILING PROCESS is set out step by step below.

OUR BOOK WHOLESALER

The relationship WRITERSWORLD has with its book wholesaler is unique as their normal policy is not to deal with authors/publishers who have less 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, it 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 =

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:

1. When you have approved your Sample Copy, which will be sent to you direct from the printer, we will send our book wholesaler five copies of your book. We pay the printer for this out of the publishing fee you pay us. Before sending our book wholesaler the five complimentary copies, we send them the Advance Information Sheet (see previous page), along with the book’s cover, so they can enter the book into their systems and at the same time know to expect the five complimentary copies. As a consequence of this policy, your book will be treated by our book wholesaler as an in-stock book, ahead of time. This in turn means your book will be allocated a much more favourable delivery period to those tens of thousands of book retailers who use our book wholesaler as their wholesaler.

2. 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 e-mail. 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, you can, if you wish, use these initially to supply our book wholesaler who will stock your book; WRITERSWORLDwill provide you with a delivery note that meets their requirements.We will also provide you with a simple advice sheet detailing how you can also get your book listed with the book wholesalers Bertram's in the UK and Ingram Book Group in the US, although we cannot get involved in administering these two accounts.

3. 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.

4. 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 author/publishers and WRITERSWORLD down by their activities. These activities have involved our book wholesaler having to contend with author/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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

WRITERSWORLD BOOK RETAILING PROCESS STEP by STEP

1. 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.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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).

6. 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.

BOOK PROMOTION PACKAGE

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.

Blackwell's, one of the most respected and long-established book retailers
in the UK, became the first high-street bookseller in the UK to offer print-on-demand books while customers wait, this publishing innovation being delivered by an 'Espresso Book Machine' (EBM), which can print and bind any one of a million titles. These EBMs, along with the surge in demand for e-books, indicate an exciting new direction for book publishing.

BOOK PROMOTION PACKAGE

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 you 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 £278.00. 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. Also, the income you could derive from such sales is often depleted by the audacious practice of many print-on-demand book publishers who deduct fees from any royalties (having already charged to publish your book) which they claim are for ‘Administration’ or the ‘Handling’ of the royalty payments.

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 printer, 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, 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 £1.00 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 e-mail 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.

WRITERSWORLD BOOK PUBLISHING PROCESS STEP by Step

1. Author sends contract and files to WRITERSWORLD. Contract returned to author via email.

2. WRITERSWORLD sends author International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

3. WRITERSWORLD selects the appropriate sub-contract copy editor and book cover designer.

4. Copy editor and book cover designer establish direct contact with author and directly work with the author on the respective tasks.

5. WRITERSWORLD receives completed ISBN application form from the author, creates imprint/copyright page, forwards the form to Nielsen’s, the ISBN agency, and pays the registration fee on behalf of the author.

6. Author receives the list of their 10 x ISBNs. WRITERSWORLD begins to enter information into the database, from which all book retailers take their information about a particular book.

7. 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 will then submit the book cover and text files to the Amazon ‘Search inside this book’ programme.

OUR STANDARD BOOK PUBLISHING SERVICE

FEE: £3,245.00

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 that relate to your book, you will have plenty of ISBNs 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 the Amazon 'Search inside this book' 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 5 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 £45.00 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.

• We will also provide you with a free Amazon Kindle e-book version of your book and Amazon Kindle set up service and e-book distribution.

• Additionally, we will 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 the author 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 SERVICE

FEE: £2,995.00

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 other services we offer with our Standard Book Publishing Service, but at a lower cost.

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 addition to a soft cover version and in place of the hard 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 paid for by the author 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 set up 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 v its competitors is akin to CDs v cassette tapes.

We are now able to set up an 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.

ATTENTION UNITED KINGDOM TAX PAYERS

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.

ATTENTION UNITED STATES TAX PAYERS

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.

ATTENTION TAX PAYERS IN OTHER PARTS OF THE WORLD

Obviously, we cannot offer any input as to possible tax write-offs or deductions you might make if you live elsewhere in the world apart from the UK or the USA. 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. http://www.plr.uk.com

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:

1. Your book’s ISBN is registered in your name and your name only.

2. You can buy copies of your book direct from the printer at print cost.

3. You receive 90% of any royalties on retail book sales.

4. You personally retain the full copyright on your book’s cover design and finished content.

5. You are provided on publication with a copy of 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.

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APPENDIX 1

Sample Testimonial (there are many more here)

It is the rigorously defined policy of WRITERSWORLD not to change a single word of any testimonial with the exception of correcting spelling errors and protecting our trademark by displaying it as WRITERSWORLD.

TITLE OF BOOK: On a Cushion of Air
The Story of HOVERLLOYD and the Cross-Channel Hovercraft
AUTHOR: Robin Paine & Roger Syms
ISBNs: 9780956897800: 9780956897817
What I think of the service I received from WRITERSWORLD

When we first decided to write the history of the hovercraft three years ago, we didn’t give any thought as to how we might eventually have our work published. As time moved on we thought we should at least start to make some enquiries, but it soon became apparent that for a specialist subject like ours we would probably have difficulty in finding a publisher to take it on and even if we could find one, the process seemed to be fraught with difficulties, not the least that we would not have control of our book. It was then that we investigated self-publishing on the Internet. It didn’t take long to come across WRITERSWORLD and, after making comparisons with a few other websites, it seemed that they were head and shoulders above the others in presentation and content. What gave us huge confidence was they told a very comprehensive story about publishing, and while not pretending to understand it all, it was clear they had nothing to hide. In fact they went further and covered many of the pitfalls.

We started the process a whole year before publication, which, for a first book, was very much the right thing to do. Having met Graham Cook, we had no hesitation in signing up with WRITERSWORLD. Nothing seemed to be a problem and it was the ultimate in professionalism from day one. Graham proved to us that the term ‘self-publishing’ was a misnomer, because you do in fact need a publisher. It is just that you take the risk, but reap the rewards and, most importantly of all, have total control of your book.

ISBN numbers were obtained, we were set up with the book wholesaler, who supplies Amazon and the major UK book stores, and all the nuts and bolts were put in place so that when we were ready to go to print it was all there. We were allocated a copy editor, Ian Large, and front and back cover designers, Charles Leveroni and Jag Lall, all of whose praises we cannot sing loudly enough. We had no concept of just what was involved in the art of designing a book to fit the topic – size of book; font style and size; presentation of pictures; page numbering and headings; fitting the pages and pictures together; and not forgetting the corrections to grammar, punctuation and formats for all things numerical. Our tome was 700 pages long and Ian Large did an outstanding job in producing what we think is the perfect design and presentation for our story. We had no idea as to how it should look and feel, but as soon as Ian produced it we knew he had got it right – a rare skill indeed – resulting in two very happy rooky authors.

Likewise the front and back covers produced by Charles Leveroni and Jag Lall were beautifully and skilfully designed to add to the overall quality of our book. Their printer, Dave Matthews of Print-On-Demand, did more than justice to the print quality of the book, and, like everyone else involved, was a joy to deal with. The bottom line is that those involved with WRITERSWORLD work as a highly professional team to provide a service to authors, which one would imagine would be hard to beat. Like an orchestra with the best musicians, it still needs a skilful conductor to bring everything together, and that is embodied in the aforementioned team at WRITERSWORLD.

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APPENDIX 2

EXAMPLES of AUTHOR AND BOOK DESCRIPTION sent to the NIELSEN BOOK DATA ENHANCED LISTING SERVICE to make the book easier to find by search terms.

TITLE OF BOOK: Clay Shooting for Beginners and Enthusiasts
AUTHOR: John King
ISBN: 978-0-956346-0-0

The perfect guide for beginners, novices and hot shots! As one of the leading coaches in clay pigeon shooting, John King has produced his excellent easy to understand Clay Shooting book. Whether you are new to clay shooting or an experienced shot seeking to improve, this book will guide you through the techniques and give you a shooting method that works time after time. Renowned internationally as the ‘Clay Shooting Coaches Coach’, John’s style is relaxed and no-nonsense. His philosophy is that coaching should be simple, and most importantly fun! Now you can enjoy John’s lessons from the comfort of your own home. Clay Shooting for Beginners and Enthusiasts is an essential addition to any shooter’s library. The 2009 edition is a comprehensive update of the author’s 1991 collector's item. www.johnkingcoaching.com

TITLE OF BOOK: Born to Whisper
AUTHOR: Nicole Golding and Adam Goodfellow
ISBN: 978-0-9564440-0-4

After meeting Monty Roberts in 1996, Nicole Golding and Adam Goodfellow were among the first people in the UK to become ‘horse whisperers’. Born to Whisper is the much-awaited sequel to their first book, Whispering Back. They chart the highs and lows of working in one of the world’s most romantic professions, as they help people to make sense of their horses’ behaviour. From wild, untouchable horses, to those who violently attack anyone who comes within striking distance, they have seen it all. Yet their story goes far beyond tales of remedial horses. From surfing to rock music, from the Cotswolds to Hawaii, from tragedy to the joy of giving birth - in a stable, no less - this book is a remarkable chronicle, taking the reader on a voyage that helps make sense of the contradictions of modern life. www.borntowhisper.com

TITLE OF BOOK: Of Sluices and Sisters
AUTHOR: Alison Collin
ISBN: 978-0-9562938-0-0

These reminiscences, many funny and some very poignant, have been recounted orally for many years, and now appear in print for all to enjoy, painting a picture of what it was to be a student nurse in the 1960s - a time when legendary Ward Sisters ruled supreme, starched white aprons were the hallmark of a nurse, and wearing make-up was likely to result in a severe reprimand! Patients going berserk in the night, nurses hitching rides on meat lorries - these are only some of the events outlined, running alongside tales of what really went on in those wards, by day and at night, including some quite personal and varied reflections of those in training. Readers certainly don’t need a medical background in order to enjoy these anecdotes, but those trained as nurses during that era will find many nostalgic moments with which they can identify, while contemporary nurses are given insights into how different their profession was in the not-too-distant past – those days prior to computers and modern diagnostic techniques. www.alisoncollin.co.uk

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WRITERSWORLD a leading book publisher in self-publishing, print-on-demand books and book reprints in the United Kingdom that also issues the ISBN in the author's name, pays the author 90% of the royalties and supplies the author with copies of their books at print cost. www.writersworld.co.uk

© WRITERSWORLD Limited: Registered in England and Wales: Number 4367863: Registered Office: 2 Bear Close Flats, Bear Close, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, OX20 1JX England. Dun & Bradstreet Number: 232853932 WRITERSWORLD is the UK registered trade mark of WRITERSWORLD Limited.

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