AUTHORS

    When a person accumulates enough experience, often they will think about sharing their experience with other people.
    The various ways of sharing is conversation person to person, classes, publishing, radio, television, etc. I have done each of these ways.
    From time to time I will typeset, print, and publish books via offset printing.
Printing organizations vary greatly in size and specialties. I have on hand a promotional piece of a large newspaper that shows their press six stories high. They show photos of the various operations in the production of their newspapers. And I do the same operations but on a very small scale in comparison.
    One day I watched the owner of a very large printing company create an advertisement. I found it interesting in that he did the same steps I would do in the creation of an advertisement. The only difference was that he had more money to spend in his creations.
    The large book publishers find that not all books are financial winners. And at one time they found that only one out of ten was a winner financially. Thus they are reluctant to invest in a brand new author as the financial risk is much too great.
    So when an author discovers that barrier in their book going into print, they often will consider a small printer / publisher like me.
    My advise is generally the same. How much money can you afford to lose in order to get your book into print? And after I have looked at their typed or word processing manuscript plus the text on a suitable disk, I can give a quotation if I am interested. Some books are not for me, some are.
    Author's alterations (AAs) can be very time consuming and expensive. And such AAs can increase the cost upwards of five times the original quotation. Thus it is very prudent for the author to provide a manuscript without grammar, spelling, and content errors the first time. Otherwise the cost can become excessive, and I do not want that cost. And often the author can not afford that cost. So the best cure to that problem, is to prevent that problem.
    If, after I give a firm quotation after examination, and the author decides to pay for the printing and or publishing.... I advise the author then to go ahead and win. Often the suggestion is to put 500 copies into print. If he / she sells them all, and the price is right, the money is available to print more. Of course there can come a time when the sales shrink and the inventory of books on hand just gathers dust.
    And at times a book can become a real winner. I recall at the very beginning of my learning about the book publishing trade, my employer created a book that I did some market research on for them, and the sales of the hard cover was over 1,200,000 with repeat printings!
    And then at times a printing of 500 books for a travel book resulted in less than 50 sales for the author. On the other hand I have self published books that were financial winners.
    In any event, if you have something important to share with the world, putting your book into print is one way of doing just that.
    Publishers often figure their costs and multiply by a factor of 5 or 7 to arrive at the retail price of the books. There are industry discounts that apply. Books stones want a discount, distributors want a share, the author wants a percentage, advertising takes a share, shipping & handling, etc.
    So can you build value into your book that allows such a mark up?
    I meet a wide variety of authors. One author was my customer for 22 years before she passed on. I printed many pamphlets, books, books for her over the years. And she lived many miles from me.
    Some authors are very difficult to work with. And rather go into detail let me say it is best that I avoid such authors, or if they want to cease work... I have no objection at all.
    On the other hand I want the books that I print to be winners... and I do depend on the authors to do their job, as well as suppliers of various kinds.
    In the last few days I have put into print a 148 page perfect bound book 5-1/2" x 8-1/2" less trim with a full colour cover, and b&w inside pages. I have used a different method of reproduction so that I can publish just a few copies, and let the sales finance any additional reproductions. It is best to let the market via sales pay for business expansion in any form.
    I find that normally the author of a book is the best sales person for the book. As they carry copies with them, and meet people, often sales result from their conversations at that time.
    Just because you advertise your book does not mean you will get orders. Always test your advertising. Results vary. I recall one mailing for a book I had published produced a 5% return on each mailing. Nice. I believe in testing mailing lists on a small scale... like samples of 20 here and there. The mail list brokers would like to sell you a 2000 test mailing more or less. They make their money... but do you end up with a profit or a loss? Best to test.
    Copyright is important. Best you read about copyright. Because you can lose the right of copyright of your writings if you are ignorant of the law. I can give you valuable insights on copyright. You can own the copyright but assign the rights of printing, publishing, distribution on an exclusive perpetual arrangement with a publisher.
    I suggest strongly that you place on your original manuscript on the title page the following:
TITLE OF THE BOOK, Copyright (c) (year) (your full name) and your mailing address, and current date. I give much more information to active customers.
    Remember the bottom line. Will you or will you not make a profit? And only spend as much as you can afford to lose. And then go to win. Good advice.
    I recall a YOGA CALENDAR I printed just before Christmas one year. I had to go back to press two more times to keep up with the orders. The author then located a publisher that was duly impressed and agreed with the author to print thousands of copies on coated stock. No problem.
    If a book is a real winner, and sales justify it, I can arrange for giant printers to do business with me to put additional copies into print at reasonable prices, and high quality.
There is such a thing as remainder books. That is these are books from a publisher's inventory that are sold at severe discounts to used book stores. And thus worthwhile books can be available at very, very reasonable prices. I recall buying about a dozen such books to give to my customers. Those books contained valuable information for authors.
    Hopefully I have given you information that can help you in you writing and publishing... to publish or not to publish? That is the question.