Calling all Aussies

G'day, just joined and looking forward to reading all your posts and finding my way around. In the meantime, I'm pulling my hair out trying to get info about ebooks and print-on-demands for us Aussies, and wondering if anyone in here has gone down that road. I know I can get ebooks up on Amazon without losing too much more hair, but want to know about print-on-demand separate from the CreateSpace option, also about payment by Amazon to Aussies (I believe they still pay by cheque - which century are we in again?) but apart from all that, would just love to hear from any Aussies in this forum. Maybe we could start a group - I say "we" because at this stage I have NO idea how to start a group in here, heck I'm not even sure if this post will even appear but fingers crossed. C'mon Aussie c'mon, let me know you're out there and I'm not alone!

Hi arikdiver! For what it's worth, my partner and I have both been writers most of our lives (I've only had 1 book published but usually write articles, while he's had 8 books pubished, was an editor with a major publishing company for years, and taught thee Diploma of Professional Writing and Editing, so we were both very much against self-publishing. Our mind-set was "yikes, anyone can publish a book now, literacy is going to hell in a handbasket!" But over the last few years, we've begun to see the value in it, particularly as we see that readers are setting the standard through reviews and are being very critical of poor writing. The major benefits we see are: 1. A book published by a publisher can take anything up to a year to reach the shelves, and once there, is available to a limited number of people (usually Australia only for us Aussies) and for a limited time. After a certain time (usually 3 months) if it's not reprinted then it's removed and usually remaindered, while an ebook is available to the entire world and for as long as you leave it up, and you can update it, add to it, correct it, re-write parts of it at any time! 2. The royalties on both ebooks and professionally published books are almost identical, even if it doesn't seem that way. i.e. royalty on a published book is 10% of wholesale price, which for $29.99 is usually about $1.50 per book, while Amazon's 70% royalty on an ebook priced at $2.99 is ... $2.09. And 3. while the publisher is supposed to distribute and promote your book, sad to say it rarely happens to the writer's satisfaction. My book was published by Penguin and I had lots of ideas of where it should be available for best sales, but most people I knew who were looking for it never found it, and Penguin never promoted it. With ebooks, you and you alone are responsible for promoting your book, through blogging, website, email, newsletter, facebook, twitter, etc. The fourth reason is that, sad to say, book sales have been declining rapidly since 2008. We've had an online bookshop for 16 years and today our sales are less than 30% of what they were in 2007. We've even tried giving books away to charity shops, but they refuse them because they have a store-room full of books no-one wants, and their prices are $1 each! I know some bookshops who have had to burn all their stock because they can't get rid of them. Just a few things you might want to think about while you're deciding which way to go.

Thanks for that Cliff Face, that's good to know. I believe the fee to cash an international cheque is pretty steep anyway, so I'd just as soon wait until I reached $100 - that may take a year or more, but I'm in no hurry to be rich and famous with my $100!

Hi Helix! Yes, the advance - it's getting less and less these days, and that's only if you're lucky enough to get your ms accepted. After all, not much point paying $5,000 when they're not even sure the book will sell 500 copies! One friend got a $5,000 advance a few years ago and they remaindered her book after only around 300 sales - they won't want to keep making that mistake! A lot of publishing companies are either going out of business these days, or becoming vanity publishers - although, of course, they don't call themselves that. Take Hay House with their extension, Balboa Press, which will publish your book for something like $7,000. Yikes! Editing - yes, if you're not a natural editor, then I agree you need to pay for that, but cover art is not a big problem if you know your way around Photoshop or something similar. And yes Helix - you're right about royalties, I wrote the above late at night and my brain starts shutting down at about 11pm. which is why I don't touch my book in the evenings!

Hey McCardey, I didn't recognize you with all that black around your mouth!