PLASHMILL PRESS
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Publisher Services
PlashMill Press offers a full range
of services to authors who wish to get their work published. Our basic
package includes proofreading, editing, typesetting, provision of a
standard ISBN number, printing the book with attached barcode and registering
the book with our printer for one year. We register the title with Nielsen's
and Amazon and other distributors and retailers. We create a web-page
for the book on our website with details about you and the book itself.
Finally we submit copies of the book the UK legal deposit libraries.
There is a charge for these services. It is not possible to give an
accurate estimate of costs without knowing what the format and size
of the book might be, but to give an example accurate at time of writing
this price, for a text only book up to 60,000 words with full colour
cover, would be £600. Please click HERE
to find out more.
We would like to make it clear
that we are not a vanity publisher. We won't publish a book just because
the author can afford to pay the fee. All authors must go through the
submissions process and we will decide which projects we wish to take
forward. However the traditional book-publishing world has become conservative
to the point that it is almost impossible for new authors to get published,
particularly if their work is anything out of the ordinary. We are keen
to work closely with new authors and protecting the integrity of our
imprint is central to that.
The simple fact of the matter is
that it costs us a considerable amount of money, even with the benefits
of modern printing techniques, to set up a book ready to be marketed.
We could choose to follow the traditional path but this would inevitably
restrict our publishing activities. We want to publish as many good
books as we can. So we require our authors to contribute to the initial
costs of publishing the book.
What do the authors get? After
all, a traditional publisher will pay an advance, not ask for cash!
That is true. However there are
a few cold hard truths that authors must realise. In the first place
most advances are very small, under £5000, and the majority are
much less. Secondly, the traditional publisher will normally offer a
new author only ten percent of net profit.
Let me put that another way. Once
the publisher has taken all the costs of proofing, editing, setting
up, printing, marketing and promoting the book, subtracted all the discounts
to wholesalers and retailers without which the book trade would not
exist at all, there will be a sum of money left. The publisher will
take nine-tenths of that money and the author will get one tenth. And
remember, the author's advance is not a gift, but a loan. The author
sees no royalty money at all until the publisher has recouped
the advance. So the author actually ends up paying all the up-front
costs, as well as the wages of all the publisher's staff, the publisher's
new Mercedes, the fancy upmarket offices, the lot. As long as the book
is successful.
What that means is that in the
modern world the old-fashioned publisher's advance is usually worth
very very little. For the benefit of having it, authors must give away
almost all their rights in their book.
Compare that with our approach.
We won't kid you: you won't get an advance from us, and not only that,
we ask you to contribute to the up-front costs. BUT, and this is very
important, we pay you royalties right from the very first book sold,
and our royalty rates are very generous indeed. As they should be, because
we are in partnership with our authors.
With our system authors start to
make money right away and because the royalty payments are so generous,
they can make good profit on small numbers of sales. We even have a
special author discount price which means that if you want to sell your
own books you can and keep all the profit.
The downside is that if your book
does not sell, you may lose money. But think about it for a moment.
A book retailing at £11.99 may have to sell under one hundred
copies to recoup your investment. That's nothing at all. And because
we are not a vanity publisher, we won't lie to you. We will not publish
any book that we do not honestly believe can recoup its costs.
Please click HERE
to view further details of our system and to see examples of how it
works.
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