Publishers My Store Won't Deal With

I replied in the other thread, but here it is again:

All the book stores I talked to were only interested in three things: 1) Are the books returnable? 2) Is there a good discount (they expect at least 40%)? 3) Is it avialable through distributors/wholesalers like Ingram? If you can answer "yes" to all three questions, they would definitely consider it. If not, good luck.

1st books is AuthourHouse isint it?

i would hope that, by now, writers were fully aware that mainstream books stores will not carry most self-pubishing companies. If you look around you can find 'sleath' PODs the stores don't know about yet but on the whole it just aint gonna happen.

There may be some people lurking at the back who need a reminder

Perhaps it's time for thread on 'how to get you POD distibuted at a reasonable cover price'?

veinglory said:

There may be some people lurking at the back who need a reminder

Perhaps it's time for thread on 'how to get you POD distibuted at a reasonable cover price'?

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My first thought would be by working with Lightning Source directly. Companies like LuLu place fairly high markup on each copy sold, skip the middleman and set up your own company.

Hypothetically, let's say you have a 200 page book. If someone using Ingram purchases the book, this is the cost breakdown.

Lightning Source: $3.50
LuLu: $8.53

Now your upfront capital costs are more expensive. You will need to pay a setup charge with LSI, which runs around $50 to $100 I believe. The largest expense would be buying a block of ISBN numbers from Bowkers. I believe that charge is $225 for a block of 10.

Let's set your 200 page trade paperback to $12.95 with a 55% wholesale discount. When a wholesaler buys from Lightning Source, there is no shipping fee. Next, deduct the actual LSI cost to print the book, and we come to $2.32.

I might also point out that you can enable returns of the book, without paying the "insurance fees" some POD companies charge you. The caveat is that you, as the publisher, receive any returned books.

Now, is $2.32 profit of cash flow per book going to be enough to make it worth your while? You could tweak the retail price up a bit, at the expense of potential sales.

Keep in mind, none of the above gets into the cost of editing, cover design and other important capital costs involved with producing a book for retail sale. You also still need to get your book into the wholesaler's database. I think Lightning Source offers some assistance in this area.

Mike

veinglory said:

Perhaps it's time for thread on 'how to get you POD distibuted at a reasonable cover price'?

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Wouldn't a thread on 'How to avoid the pitfalls of POD by getting an agent and publishing the traditional way' be more pertinent? Or 'How to write well enough so POD isn't your only option?'

In this sub-forum? No, I don't.

YES,

First books became Author house.

I am an Author House customer and yes, AH was 1st Books. They changed the name about two years ago.

The three conditions that usually strike a POD out of the brick and mortar stores are sopt on although, the two mentioned above are distributed through Ingram. The short discount is the real killer with the non-returnable issue right behind. iUniverse gives a stingy 15% through Ingram while Author House offers 35%. That seems mighty close to 40% and the hook AH uses is to say that authors can advise bookstores to simply bump up the list price to make up the 5% difference and the obstacle is removed. Sounds great, eh? Well, as it's told to me by my friendly bookstore owner, here's the catch. With few exceptions bookstores now have their own on-line catalouges which are almost always partnered with the two biggies--AMZ and B&N. The list prices for books from POD companies is of course listed in these catalogues. Bookstores aren't going to increase an in-house book from Author House when it's offered at a lower price in very their own catalogue; difficult ot aruge in the face of that logic. So as the bard would say, "..therein lies the rub."

There are ways around this. I know of a POD customer who sent her book directly to the B&N corporate headquarters. Someone there looked at her book; deemed it "Okay" and removed the POD I.D. and zoom on to the shelves it went. Don't ask me how many issues the author agreed to buy back because I don't know but my guess is, as a trade paperback book, it was probably fewer than 50.
POD is not easy. If one is content with only on-line catalogue sales it's an okay route.

Mike Coombes said:

Wouldn't a thread on 'How to avoid the pitfalls of POD by getting an agent and publishing the traditional way' be more pertinent? Or 'How to write well enough so POD isn't your only option?'

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We really should dispel this myth that the sanctification of acceptance by money grubbing publishers assures quality. Ghost written biographies of soap stars and Teen Techno thrillers are not quality products.
Publishing anything that you expect to turn a quick buck out of is neither virtuous or a sainted seal of quality. How could it be? These people will publish anything they smell money around.
At least self publishers and PODs are done from love.

I am not sure that countering anti-POD bias with pro-POD bias gets us to the right place. Generally sticking to the specifics allows each person to decide where best to publish their manuscript.

Peekay said:

At least self publishers and PODs are done from love.

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POD/Vanity are never done from love. Try to ask them to waive their fees and hold your hands after the book is printed.

Just try.


And to say traditional houses only care about money... sounds a bit like sour grapes to me.

out of love?

Maybe the "love" reference refers to those individuals who use P.O.D. as a technology for printing their own work and distributing it themselves online through P.O.D as some have to limited success...but as maestro said... the vanity publishers are not doing it for anything but profit by selling books to the authors.

As for big publishers...obviously it is a money issue, since they must put money into a manuscript, they are wanting to make money on the other end...thats why publishing is a business...ie to make money.

One of the best pieces of advice i've seen on this board, other than "write the best novel you can"...is to "start at the top and work your way down".

Personally I could go P.O.D. right now, with a nice cover by a professional graphic artist who happened to live outside the U.S. and did excellent work for me pro-bono, but I would be limiting myself...So I want P.O.D. efforts to be the last resort, not the first...

Only after exhausting every other option would I go with the P.O.D. on Amazon.com route...its a decent option, last resort, better than nothing I suppose, but I would definitely never pay thousands of dollars to set up printing and other things I could easily do cheaper myself.

P.O.D. technology is nice, but it seems the bottom rung is about as far as it will get you...keep plugging at publishers and agents and if all else fails at least you can get on the bottom rung anytime you want without a big investment...and probably without a BIG RETURN EITHER.

Rev. James

Peekay said:

At least self publishers and PODs are done from love.

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As are many murders, and I wouldn't advocate either.

Mike Coombes said:

Wouldn't a thread on 'How to avoid the pitfalls of POD by getting an agent and publishing the traditional way' be more pertinent? Or 'How to write well enough so POD isn't your only option?'

Click to expand...

For a publisher to consider buying writer's work, the book must be both well-written AND marketable. If a title is for a tiny niche readership, a commercial publisher will not be interested. Hence, POD works for certain circumstances.

POD isn't a good choice for an author who writes what he hopes will be a blockbuster novel; it is sometimes a good choice for an author who aims at a narrow (and usually local) readership.

Now a thread on "Is your work suitable for POD" might be a possible thread. . . .

What about a sub-forum on "Self-Printing"? That means buying the ISBNs, contacting a book printer, arranging the layout and design and off you go. This is the most costly initial setup but the price per book is lower. There is no warehouse or promotional help so you need a pickup truck, a huge garage and at least 500 faithful friends who will buy the book. Or perhaps only 498 friends. You'll keep a copy for yourself and send one to Oprah. That should do it nicely.

Hi Lance,

Yep, we have a sub-board for that. Go back here: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=47 and look near the top. "Conventional Self-Publishing." That's what it means.

citymouse said:

iUniverse gives a stingy 15% through Ingram while Author House offers 35%. That seems mighty close to 40% and the hook AH uses is to say that authors can advise bookstores to simply bump up the list price to make up the 5% difference and the obstacle is removed. Sounds great, eh?

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For the record--and a caveat to anyone who's thinking of going with them--iUniverse lets the author decide (within parameters) what discount will be offered. Most of us go with the maximum royalty, which means minimum discount to booksellers. That's what I did. But not one bookseller asked me what the discount was, and I offered to buy the books, sell them to the reseller at my cost (which is a 40% discount) and take only $2.00 per book on consignment. They still weren't interested. This goes beyond the basic POD dilemma. The companies have such a bad name that many resellers won't even discuss carrying their product.

Schoolmarm said:

For the record--and a caveat to anyone who's thinking of going with them--iUniverse lets the author decide (within parameters) what discount will be offered. Most of us go with the maximum royalty, which means minimum discount to booksellers. That's what I did. But not one bookseller asked me what the discount was, and I offered to buy the books, sell them to the reseller at my cost (which is a 40% discount) and take only $2.00 per book on consignment. They still weren't interested. This goes beyond the basic POD dilemma. The companies have such a bad name that many resellers won't even discuss carrying their product.

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Interesting. The minimum discount for Amazon is (if I recall correctly) 25%. I don't know if this would also be acceptable to B&N online, but Amazon is by far the more important online market.

For bookshop orders, you need to provide a little more fat--25% will simply not interest a bookseller (the wholesaler takes a bite out of the discount too). Conversely, if the publisher has been "blacklisted" or if the author have no realistic expectation of bookshop orders, then I would say set the lowest discount possible.

Lulu's Global Distribution package (50% fixed discount) is interesting when examined in this light. I imagine they want to be able to say "your book will be orderable in any bookstore in the country" and that the 50% discount is intended to underpin that. I wonder if it does.

first, i really think it's smart to choose your words. pod isn't for bad writers. maybe POD authors are fed up with the tiny window that publishers give us. i got impatient and went with self-publishing. i don't have time to wait on them to tell me my book is good.

so far it's going good. i'm getting tons of press and my book isn't out for another two months. so we'll see

yes, these are the downsides to self-publishing in general...

acousticgroupie said:

first, i really think it's smart to choose your words. pod isn't for bad writers. maybe POD authors are fed up with the tiny window that publishers give us. i got impatient and went with self-publishing. i don't have time to wait on them to tell me my book is good.

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There are exceptions to every rule. That said, everyone who ive come across that self publishes has the same argument.

"Im good, and I didnt want to wait." Ok, maybe they are good. Ive yet to see proof of that, but its not outside of the realm of possibility.

The "Tiny window" is tiny because of the lack of quality submissions. So many factors go into an agent/publisher wanting to take on a manuscript.

I mean no offense to anyone who has or will be self publishing. I just have yet to see a self published work that is as good as the writers of them claim.

If youre a good enough writer, have a story that needs to be told, have a market for your type of story, work hard and dont give up, someone will take a look at you.

If not, then self publish.

This is not aimed at you groupie, so dont take offense. They are just my general experiences and feelings.

How can you be sure that your work is good enough to publish conventionally if agents & conventional publishers don't even look at your work? Sure, you can have friends & family read the book, but they're going to tell you it's good. I've finished one manuscript & have been told I need to adjust my comma usage, but that's it. However, it's a young adult novel, and from what I've heard, conventional publishers ARE looking for that genre.