Frequently Asked Questions

Book Publishing FAQ

While we are always available to answer all of your publishing questions, we’ve provided below a good amount of answers we give most often.

Unfortunately no. Traditional publishers give you an advance towards future sales of your book. They pay you to publish your book. We cannot afford to do that. They basically buy the rights to your story, which in turn means, if your book doesn’t do well, they will unpublish it and you will never be able to do anything with it again. We are a small press publishing company implementing online technologies in order to get your book published for individual sales and through online sales channels. Your book will always be available in the online book world until you chose to unpublish it. You also retain all of the rights to your story.

No. Self-published books tend to have a stigma against them that they are not professionally done. Not edited, not checked for story continuity, not professionally formatted or designed – overall, just not good. Self-publishing also limits your exposure to the world, distribution deficits, binding deficiencies and very little wholesale capabilities. With us, your book will be available in all online bookstores including Barnes & Noble, Borders and BooksAMillion. It will have global distribution with the type of sales channels and options that would allow your book to get into brick and mortar bookstore shelves. And it will have the professionalism, readers expect and demand.

Not really. While my services can print quantities to your specification (POD) like vanity publishers do, I don’t limit your options. They tend to push your book through the conveyor belt process. They don’t care if it has sales capabilities, if its been edited, if the book cover has sales potential, what your genre is… they just take your money and provide you a book to sell and they can be incredibly expensive for the services they offer. Plus, the amount they charge you for inventory usually pushes your profit margins out.

We put a more human touch to every book we publish. I am very selective about what I publish as I spend quite a bit of time working with the author, making sure each step of the process is done right and to your satisfaction. I want your publishing experience to be as easy as possible and so you will always talk to me personally. That being said, it is just me, and if you want a more in-depth experience with more opportunities, experience or more employees, check out the others.

With technological advances today, self-publishing has become easier than ever. There are many self-publishers and vanity publishing websites available for the aspiring author to implement and use. If you are capable of interior layout, professional book cover design, are willing to learn all of the technologies, research and experiment with all of the platforms (to find the best) and go at it alone, by all means, go for it. But if you don’t have the time or desire to learn all of that, if you want your book to look professional, and you want it listed in more places than just Amazon and you are willing to pay for someone else to take over the process for you, then read on.

No, the author retains full creative control and rights of their book. I will, however, make critiques and suggestions that would help benefit your book. I also do not claim movie rights.

A publishing services company performs all of the steps necessary to produce a finished book and release it to the market. The author pays a fee that covers the cost of mechanical editing, interior formatting and professional cover design, printing and binding, as well as limited promotion, complete order fulfillment and other administrative services. We also work directly with the author to determine the best size, binding type and style of the book that will best fit its potential readers.

No. While we do not review or evaluate manuscripts for literary merit or market potential, we do want to make sure it fits in our educational aspects and Christian views. There are also categories that we do not accept: libelous or racist material, hate literature, or pornography. We reserve the right to reject any work that we may find to be unsuitable for our company.

Not necessarily. If you want to complete the copyright process, please do so. You will want to go to copyright.gov directly. Do not be conned into paying any other company for a copyright as there are a lot of scam services out there. We can also do the process for you for a fee. The copyright will be registered in your name, not the publishing house, and you will receive the certificate when it has been completed.

First, we request you fill out or submission form, completing every field to the best of your ability. We will read through your query and if your book sounds interesting enough and if it may be a fit for our publishing company, we will contact you and request that you submit your manuscript. Manuscripts are reviewed within weeks for merit, sales ability and quality. If we chose to take on your project we will be in touch with a plan to move forward. Upon manuscript acceptance, the book can be published in a couple of months (not years like traditional publishers).

Your book will be distributed to almost 40,000 retailers, libraries, schools and universities. It will be listed on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, Book Depository, Ingram and nearly two dozen other book distributor sites, as well as online libraries, academic institutions, etc. Sometimes, you can even find them listed on Walmart, Target and other online retail stores.

Our distributors work with Baker Taylor, and Follett Educational Resources so most schools and libraries have access to order opportunities. My platform implements technologies for print on demand orders, as well as large quantity orders. If orders exceed quantities of 2,000, they get run on an offset printer, which reduces the cost significantly (increasing your royalties) and of course ships out from the factory direct to your customer. If companies don’t have access to any wholesale distributors our publishing house can work with them directly to complete order fulfillment.

Yes! The platform I use will create your book into 7 different formats including mobi for Amazon kindle, epub for Barnes & Noble, Apple, Sony Reader, Palm pdb, etc. These formats will then be distributed in all of the retail sales channels such as Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo, the Diesel eBook Store and others.

Yes, authors may order as many or as few author copies they want at production cost (not retail). There are no minimum orders and author copies can be drop-shipped directly to you.

We customize our publishing packages to each book. Binding type, page size and whether illustrations are required are several factors that affect the price. Once we have received your manuscript, we will provide you with a publishing proposal that outlines the fees. We’ll also outline the general production specifications of your book and how long it will take to complete.

Yes. If your manuscript is complete, edited and ready to go, submit it to us for review. We can offer publishing contracts only for completed manuscripts. We also highly suggest having it edited before sending, as you want your work to be pristine so you can set your best foot forward.

Once you submit your manuscript, it will be reviewed. If accepted, you’ll receive a detailed publishing proposal that outlines how we’ll handle the publication of your book, and what it will cost. If you accept our proposal, you’ll return the signed contract along with the first payment, and we’ll get to work!

Authors receive a percentage of the retail price of each book sold. Since you set your cost, you will know how much each sold book receives. Since the book sales industry is that of chance there is never any guarantee of outside sales. Marketing and publicity help inform the public about your book and it is up to each individual consumer to decide if they want to purchase it. If you proceed with the publishing process you are doing so because you want to see your book published and you are willing to promote it. Do not sign up with us if you have high expectations of sales. The publishing world is saturated and each author needs to understand that it takes time and hard work to make sales.

Our in-house graphics and website design company can help you build a website, create social media accounts, print media for distribution and even help to promote your book (for a fee). But we have found, in this industry, that if the author doesn’t help promote their own book, that book may likely fail. If you just want to see your book published in order to give a few copies out to friends and family, but have no intention on promoting or working to sell your book, our in-house graphics company can assist you in the self-publishing route, but our publishing company is not likely to take on your project. Please see Kathleens-Graphics.com