Posting today
È easy like drinking a glass of water. The best thing is apply to a editor. There are fewer and fewer of them and they post things they think are safe, but they are still there. If this attempt is unsuccessful, a highly probable outcome, it can Do it yourself. The requirements are minimal. Just write with a word processors and then save the fillet format ePub. Pages it does it directly, as well open Office. With Word it's a little more complicated, but that's all. And the cover? The Australian website Canva, whose chief evangelist is Guy Kawasaki, offers hundreds di template customizable on the fly with the appropriate wordings. At the cost of 1 dollar you can download the fillet nice and ready and at the right resolution.
The Amazon account it's really five minutes for enroll al program KDP extension and send the necessary material to the servers that supply the Kindles. Half an hour later by typing your name in the Amazon search bar you will be taken to card of the ebook on Kindle Store and at that point you can and should download it. It's good luck that the author is the first buyer. The same can be done by the beyond 2,5 billion di consumers living in 13 territories where there is a Amazon Kindle Store.
If you don't like Amazon, there are so-called on the web aggregators (in Italy there are at least three) who send the ebook to online bookstores of the remotest corners of the planet. Trajectory, a start-up from Marblehead, a pleasant seaside town north of Boston, sends him to China where ebooks are sold more than books, but where books and ebooks must obtain the ok of the Beijing government to be distributed in the e-commerce of the People's Republic. Taiwan and Hong Kong do not need this type of authorization. Then there are the specialized distributors for indie writers like smashwords, BookBaby, Lulu, IngramSpark and many others. In Italy there is a start-up from Tricase (Lecce) called youcanprint.
Whatever it is, the distribution in itself it doesn't cost a single cent and generally leaves to theauthor, for each copy sold, one royalty of the 65%-70% on the cover price. The remaining 35/30% is taken by the distributor and minimally by the aggregator, if any. If you don't sell anything, nobody gets anything. It happens many times.
Then there are also these a no cost, the streaming services which are an imperial means of getting one's work discovered. So, i capital to start are really negligible. In our example, the budget is still stuck at one euro. The thicker thicker is theISBNs, but you can also do without it.
All this, however, does not eliminate a rather brutal fact. Invest way their time nello to write è risky as was putting money into Lehman Brothers subprime. It's a'organisers' activities is reward adequately very few lucky ones, certainly endowed with a talent equal to what Mr. Ripley put into other activities. Yes you can use un year a to write a story and discover is not it has value commercial. However, if it works, the comeback can be really massive: for many years JK Rowling was the largest taxpayer of the UK.
Publishing a book is equivalent to launching a start-up
However, if you want to do things right, the situation changes a lot. Any one ebook/book exposed on Amazon it's up to in fact with the works of Camilleri or with the titles of Mondadori curated by publishing professionals. Then there's the reader/consumer: usually it's a lot critical and very often insolent: it takes a moment to put one review or comment negative which is just what you need the least. There is, however, a way to reduce these negativity be a ebook or book respects of standard minimal, at least formal, of quality. content you know it is questionable and there are many examples of great writers who weren't immediately understood. However, on piano formal and also aesthetic one publication must be clean enough, if not… it's raining toads as in Magnolia.
That of the book design It is a real , an applied art with a history of half a millennium. Everything is fine book self-respecting has one style recognizable. Books with blundersgrammar, improbable punctuation and blunders in the plot and in the characterization of the characters are irritants and they don't go unnoticed even by the most casual readers. Just as they are annoying random formal choices such as font and line spacing, heading style and layout. There are some full-bodied style manuals both for the design and for the drafting of the text.
Therefore any person or organization intending to publish must worry di treat il product with investment adequate. Right, but what is this investment and what exactly does it consist of? What are the professional skills that need to be activated and how many resources do they require?
"Publishing a book is equivalent to launching a start-up”. This is how Miral Sattar thinks that she founded BiblioCrunch, a marketplace for self-published authors, after an 11-year experience in the editing of "Time" magazine. Miral also released a post very interesting in which i reviewed Costs is preferably used for publication of a ebook/book that has i necessary requirements to stay on the market and compete with the professional offer. It is interesting to offer you these evaluations which are not very different from those present in Europe and also in Italy. We have clearly adapted it to the Italian reality based on our experience.
As a basis for calculation was taken a manuscript di 70 thousand words, with 250 words per page for a total of 280 pages. Here's what comes out of it. Publishing isn't actually quite as easy as drinking a glass of water.
1. Editing
It is one of services who can do the difference between publications mediocre and a publication eccellente. The English term that describes this service is more meaningful: developmental editing. It really is development of Story which, in fact, is al center of this intervention performed by a professional which can truly have the value of a co-author.
The editor yes immersed totally in history for highlight le weaknesses of narrative structure built by the writer. Work on inconsistencies and illogicalities in the plot development, on the characterization of the characters and their relationships, on the Description of ambienti and of the narrative contexts, on the effectiveness of the dialogues, of the descriptive parts and of all The content aspects, not least the ending. Also inspect the English Language, even if the copyeditor/editor works more on the latter. The editor is one figure di support need coaching really important. We have already discussed the importance of this role in building bestsellers. In any case the editor hardly he pushes himself to rewrite the texts, a task which, in the relationship with the author, is left to the latter. If the author wants to activate a post-sales service di rewrite must to hire a professional who has the skills of ghostwriting.
Rate
From 35 to 55 euros per hour
Considering that an editor can process 5 pages per hour, the cost will be calculated on 56 hours of work.
Cost
Minimum: 1960 euros (35×56)
Maximum: 3080 euros (55×56)
2. Editing and proofreading
Once the content is settled, the manuscript moves on to a editor which checks it for eliminate The errors formal. The editor focuses on spelling, punctuation, grammar, repetitions and the respect di certain standard stylistic and communicative. Also check the correctness of the names mentioned, any numbering and citations. In general, the editor intervenes on the text only if necessary and always for formal corrections. Also check the layout, table of contents, initials (front matter) and final (back matter) of the publication.
Rate
From 20 to 40 euros per hour
Considering that an editor can process 10 pages per hour, the rate will be based on 28 hours of work.
Cost
Minimum: 560 euros (20×28)
Maximum: 1120 euros (40×28)
3. Cover
A publication is judged primarily by its cover. There cover and the before purchasing, thing which is seen of a book or of an ebook. It's important that it's a lot effective as optimized for all medium on which it will be displayed, in the most diverse sizes, including the horrible miniature thumbnail. For a cover customized, which visually expresses the content of a story, is necessary trust to a professional. Being able to give a graphic form to the essence of a story is no mean feat for someone who is foreign to its conception and therefore the author must be able to communicate it effectively to the graphic designer in charge of creating it. Hardly, under the given conditions, the latter will spend time reading the manuscript, so the author must getting ready a tailored "storytelling". di graphic. Once you've found the right representation, you may need to purchase the reproduction rights to a subject from an image bank such as Fotolia or 123RF. 50 euros should be enough to take an image at the desired resolution and size.
Cost
Minimum: 150 euro
Maximum: 2500 euro
4. Preparation of the text for publication as a book and ebook
If the manuscript has a twofold destinazione, that is, it must be distributed as a book in the channel Print on Demand (PoD) and how ebook on the web, it is better to layout it or have it prepared with Adobe InDesign which is adequately equipped to produce both editions. You can also do it yourself with a little training, but it's always best to hire a professional. If the first thing you see is the cover, the second are the inside pages.
Rate
For the production of the pdf for the PoD channel: From 2 to 4 euros per page
For the production of the ePub/mobi file for the ebook channel: from 0,50 to 2 euros per page
Cost
Minimum for pdf: 560 euros (2×280)
Maximum for pdf: 1120 euros (5×280)
Minimum for ePub/Kindle: 140 euros (0,5×280)
Maximum for pdf: 560 euros (2×280)
5. Get the ISBN
Get a code ISBNs which uniquely identifies the publication it really is indispensable for any professional publication. For Amazon it is optional, but Apple iBookstore requires it. Especially in Italy you can't do without it if you want get the rate IVA facilitated to 4% for print and digital publications. Without ISBN, the rate for ebooks rises to 22%.
Rate
Code ISBN for author publishing including barcode: 80 euros + VAT
Cost
For two codes (PoD + ebook): 160 euros + VAT
6. Distribution of the ebook and PoD
As we said above, the distribution of ebook of the PoD not ha Costs fixed, has only variable costs. for theebook you can join the program KDP extension o KDP Select by Amazon. With the latter, exclusivity is given to the e-commerce giant and barred from publishing the ebook elsewhere. It's better not to do it, because they notice it. If you intend to raggiungere le other libraries online you have to operate through a aggregator or more aggregators. In this second case, a share of the royalties will have to be transferred which can vary between 5% and 10%. The aggregator can also send the ebook to Amazon if requested. For the PoD there is CreateSpace which places it on Amazon and other affiliated bookstores, There is also youcaprint which also sends it to traditional bookstores of the Italian circuit. For a international distribution there's Lulu, Blurb, BookBaby and more.
Cost
Nobody
7. Get reviews
Some say that the reviews are the marketing more effective, if positive, or more devastating, if negative. True, even for books it works, more or less, as with places rated on TripAdvisor. Comments leave a mark. We know that on TripAdvisor, as in the Palio di Siena race, all sorts of things happen. The network is like this and the user knows it. There isn't then nothing di scandalous in getting one review a payment, favorable but always nicely motivated. As in advertising there is not no deception in putting in evidence i strengths of a product. In the United States, which is the most advanced and sophisticated market, there are riviste very serious and estimated as "Publishers Weekly”, “Kirkus”, “BlueInk" that offer to independent package authors reviews a payment. It starts at $150 and goes up to $800 based on review production time and the number of reviews purchased. It's something like native advertising, a form of advertising embedded in editorial content, also found in The New Yorker. There is no such service in Italy, but there are gods blog and of the information sites that are made available for the native advertising. This possibility should be explored. Also because there could be someone you dislike or a serial throll that ruins your business.
Rate
by 30 250 in euros
Cost
Minimum for 5 reviews: 150 euro
Maximum for 5 reviews: 1250 euro
8. Marketing plan
This is it queen phase; maybe more challenging of writing itself. There are few authors with experience in this activity. In the'traditional publishing was theeditor and its communicative structure ad occupy of the marketing. In new publishing, where the publisher tends to become an ectoplasm, falls on the author and, to an extent that is difficult to estimate, on the distributor. if theauthor hasn't already set up a social media presence, you need to entrust a third parts, as specialized web agencies, almost entirely. In any case, it must foresee an investment to build a presence on the net as a real "brand" and take care of promoting each title that it will publish in a precise marketing mix strategy. An enterprise of years and voracious of resources.
Rate
From 30 to 55 euros per hour for a marketing professional.
Cost per title
Minimum for 20 hours: 600 euro
Maximum for 20 hours: 1100 euro
Conclusions
Let's sum up these calculations and see what total investment is required to distribute a title that can compete with those of major publishing and has what it takes to be welcomed by the reader. Recall that our calculation basis is a manuscript of 70 words, with 250 words per page for a total of 280 pages.
Table at FIRSTonline.info
Assuming that the author's final margin for each copy sold is 3,30 euros (rounding the royalty on a cover price of 4,99 for the ebook and 9,99 for the PoD) the break-even point of 1300 copies for the minimum investment and 3700 for the maximum investment. These are not impossible numbers to achieve, but they are certainly challenging even in the largest market in the world, the USA.
We leave any other comments or conclusions to the reader. One thing, however, needs to be said. An entrepreneurial subject, such as a new generation publisher can be, is still an indispensable support for authors and also a figure who should receive deserved recognition from the reader as guardian of at least a formal "quality". The ikea of books is something that is yet to come.
