Not vanity publishing – but self-publishing but with a couple of added twists...

One of the biggest problems you face as an author is getting past the gatekeepers in an increasingly commercial industry that is reluctant to take risks and prefers to stick with the tried and tested. Agents, publishers and booksellers would rather stick with the current trend than try something new. Even if you write in a popular genre - having no recognizable name is a major handicap.

Publishers would rather publish a mediocre 10th novel from a tired, burnt-out hack than a good one from a fresh, new, exciting author. They would rather pay a large advance to a celebrity who can barely string a sentence together than publish an unknown writer with talent. Even if you seem promising as a new talent, they are more interested in whether you are young and photogenic than how well you write.

And if you’re a published mid-list writer you fare even worse. Your works sell in modest quantities, but the publisher does nothing to promote them. When you try to promote them yourself, the bookshops and mass media tell you: “Do it through your publisher.” And when you approach your publisher they tell you that they have neither the time nor the resources to promote your works. Worse still, after a few titles, they drop you like a hot potato and are even less willing to touch you than a new author. Your modest past sales are like a millstone round your neck.

So what do you do? Vanity (or “subsidy”) publishing is a rip-off. You pay a large sum and they print only a handful of copies. They say they will pay you a large royalty but they make no effort to sell the book. And if you try to sell it, you find you don’t even own the copies... or the plates.

Self-publishing is a respectable alternative. But is still regarded with suspicion by the next set of gatekeepers in the line: the booksellers. Also, it is expensive. And you still have the problem of storage, distribution and returns.

Print on Demand offers a variant of the self-publishing theme, but it is more expensive than it is portrayed as. It may be useful for non-fiction, but it is useless for fiction. The price it costs you to print copies of your book through POD is almost as high as the RETAIL price that the shops sell it for. As bookshops demand a trade discount of anything from 40% to a whopping 60% of the cover price, this leaves you with little or no profit whatsoever and in most cases a gaping loss!

In all these cases you face the additional problem of getting the book noticed and reviewed – or ignored more like. The big chains might buy one or two copies and the online sellers will list them.  But the bookshops will put them on the shelves at the back - while coffee table books by famous but untalented celebrities will be piled up on tables at the front!  And the online booksellers will put you at the bottom of the list, while the "Do you know who I am?" prima donna's are thrust into the customers' faces as soon as the front page fills the screen.  Faced with that approach, who is going to know about your book? Who is going to let others know?

The solution then is to produce and sell your books in a format that carries no printing costs, no mass production costs, no packaging costs, no delivery costs, no storage costs and no costly returns! That format is downloadable audiobooks and downloadable eBooks. These formats are becoming ever more popular and the audience for them is growing. Of course you will still incur some costs. Professional proof-reading and “cover design” cost money. Recording an audiobooks in a studio with a voiceover actor also costs money. But these costs can be kept within reason in various ways.

Then when it comes to selling your books, you can sell them online as downloads. So all you need is one copy to be hosted on a server. That’s where we come in. You can upload your audiobooks and eBooks to our servers and set your own price. We take a commission of £0.40 (40p) + 10% per sale AND THE REST IS YOURS. We pay you the balance every month by the 8th of the following month. So if you sell, say, 300 audiobooks or eBooks here for £4.99 (gross total £1,497) we take a commission of £269.70 for ourselves and pay you the balance of £1227.30 on or by the 8th of the following month.

The good thing about this system is that you can make good money out of even modest sales. We do not offer a mere 35% “royalty” like some others. It's your book! So you set the price and you are in full control. And of course because we don't ask for exclusivity you are perfectly entitled to sell your book elsewhere in addition to selling it on our site - including your own website. And you can pull it from our website at any time.

Bear in mind that one of the things Amazon and iTunes have proved is that when the public has abundant choice, the cumulative sales from all the items that sell in small quantities are actually much greater than the large sales from a few bestsellers. Also remember that for audiobooks, the hardware that people listen on is already out there in the form of MILLIONS of iPods. For eBooks, Amazon and Sony almost have it right with the Kindle and Sony Reader, and by the Christmas shopping period of 2008 they should have it exactly right.

To sell your audiobooks through us, all you need is to register as a Publisher with a name and a bank account. You do not need a company (although you can have one) and you do not need any ISBN numbers. As soon as you have registered, you can upload your audiobooks/eBooks to our site and start selling them. This option is available both to new authors and to established mid-list authors. It is also available to best-selling authors and of course to publishers, both large and small!

The problem of course is that your books are competing with many others. Even if your books are very good, how will people know it? Of course once people start buying them they might review them and spread the word to others. But what will make them buy a new book from an unknown author in the first place? Of course you can get your family and friends to review the book, but that just devalues the reviews and makes people less willing to trust them?

Here is our solution: every audiobook and eBook that is uploaded to our system for sale is sent out to 12 randomly selected customers – who have expressed liking for that genre – and they are invited to review it. When a book has received seven independent reviews it Goes Live. These reviews contain not only the reviewer’s opinions in their own words, but also ratings for various attributes of the book (quality of writing, pace, sound quality, value for money, overall quality, etc.) These ratings are combined into average indices, so every book can be judged by the average index for a number of important attributes. Other customers are then able to read these reviews and look at the indices and decide for themselves if they like it. Reviewers can also indicate if the book is stylistically or thematically similar to other books by more famous authors, so that fans of those authors can find more of what they like.

All of this means that if your book is good, the customers will soon know it and buy it!

One other thing: all books uploaded for sale through our site are included in our three-for-one offer. That is, if a customer buys three audiobooks or eBooks and reviews them, they get another one free – also to review. Similarly every time one of your books sells three copies, a fourth is given away free. This means that in some cases customers will get free copies of your books. But in other cases it means that buying your books will help them to get free copies of other books.

You might think that this will eat into your profits. But in the above example it is the equivalent of keeping 61.5% for yourself and offering the retailer a trade discount of less than 39.5% - which is the industry norm or better! Also remember that when a customer gets one of your books free, it introduces a new customer to your works who might not otherwise have bought it and gets you extra reviews which will further encourage others to buy it!

Turning your book into an eBook is dead easy. You can create it and format it as an MS-Word document, and then either leave it as is or convert it into an HTML or PDF file. You can create a contents list with links to chapters.

But what about recording your audiobook? If you want you can record your audiobook yourself, all you need is a good microphone and a piece of software like Audacity or Peak audio. Some sound recording and editing programs are even available free or at low cost.

But what if your speaking voice isn't up to scratch? No problem! There are plenty of unemployed and under-employed voice over artists and actors who will be happy to record your audiobook for a modest fee (or even a share of the royalties and a free copy of the audiobook to use as a calling card). Obviously we recommend that you pay the voice over artist a fee, as this is fair to both parties. Actors who do voice over work - including those who have worked with us - are listed on our Partners page, along with a number of. recording studios. If you can't afford this and are looking for a cut-price alternative, you can always try changing your voice with voice changer software.

And when your book is ready, just register with us as a publisher, upload your audiobooks/eBooks and watch the money come rolling in.

How to sell your work on this site

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