FAQ

The short answer is that when you release your book/ebook/audiobook yourself rather than publishing through a company you are by definition the publisher. Becoming your own publisher gives you complete control of your book. It is an awesome feeling to know you don’t have to ask anyone for permission to make changes or order books, and you can turn on a dime when you want to implement new marketing strategies.We recognize that becoming your own publisher may also sound intimidating. Not to worry. EBook Listing Services walks you through the process and is happy to help you consider things like whether you want to form an LLC and what you might want to call your company. We are delighted to design a logo for you if you would like one. We teach you how to manage your book as the publisher so you can be independent.

Traditional publishing is the type of publishing most people think of. The traditional publishing house is a company that publishes many books for profit and is quite selective in the manuscripts it will buy. Some names of well-known publishing houses are Tyndale, Thomas Nelson, and Zondervan. The traditional publisher buys the author’s manuscript so that the publisher, not the author, owns the manuscript The publisher then develops the manuscript into a book and sells it online and in brick-and-mortar stores. In exchange for his manuscript, the author is paid an advance and later a percentage of each book sold which is called a royalty. To traditionally publish an author usually requires a literary agent and long wait times before the book is in print. Subsidy publishing occurs when the author pays the company to publish his book. Most subsidy companies market themselves aggressively and make their money from the author, not from selling books. Many of these companies call themselves “self-publishing,” but if they publish books under their imprint and company, rather than the author’s, they are subsidy-publishers not self-publishers. Some common alternative names for Subsidy publishing include Hybrid Publishing, Author-Assisted Publishing, Independent Publishing, Partnership Publishing, Co-Publishing, Entrepreneurial Publishing, and Vanity Publishing. If you are considering publishing with a a subsidy company, then you may want to first check out the latest edition of Mark Levine’s The Fine Print of Self-Publishing: A Primer on Contracts, Printing Costs, Royalties, Distribution, E-Books, and Marketing to get some ideas for how the subsidy company works. Self-Publishing means that you, the author, are the publisher of your book, make all decisions, and keep all rights and profits at all time. While the many tasks to self-publishing can seem overwhelming, using a work-for-hire company such as EBook Listing Services can simplify your self-publishing journey by doing the heavy lifting of book preparation, ISBN procurement, putting the book up for sale, and helping you to use effective tactics for marketing and sales. NOTE: you can get a free PDF and ebook that explains the different types of publishing and includes questionnaires to determine what sort of publishing is best for you. Sign up on our list HERE.

Self-publishing allows you to control all aspects of producing your book/ebook/audiobook—wording, format, cover, pricing, distribution, and additional sales. Furthermore, you can publish in weeks or months rather than years. You have a good chance of succeeding since online platforms such as Amazon allow self-published books to compete on an equal footing with traditionally published books, and you can keep all of the money you earn. Self-publishing can be an exhilarating way to go.

Our company does all the heavy lifting to help you self-publish your book/ebook/audiobook. We walk with you step by step through the process, at each stage explaining the decisions you need to make and giving recommendations, and we are happy to show you how to do things if you want that depth of knowledge. We are always available to you for questions and advice, even after your book is published. EBook Listing Services recognizes the enormous achievement in finishing a book and aims to make you, the author, completely happy with this next step of publication. Unlike subsidy companies, we set you up so YOU are the publisher not us which means we don’t take a penny of the sales money you generate, ever. We work honestly with you to explain marketing tactics that work and how you can increase your book sales in the market. We help you publish a beautiful book that you’re super-proud of, and then we’re gone so you can pursue your career without interference.

Book covers are extremely important for establishing credibility for your book and prompting people to buy. EBook Listing Services takes care of setting up the cover process for you with a contest for multiple artists, and you will be amazed with the 30 or more different cover ideas that will come in. You can give each artist as much feedback as you want for them to perfect the image, and then we’ll help you to decide on a winner by setting up a poll you can post on social media and send to people for their opinions. We proudly believe that our covers are as personalized, high quality, and beautiful as the best professional book covers from traditional publishers. Check out our portfolio to see some examples of what we’ve done for our clients.

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, and is a unique identifier for each book/ebook/audiobook. ISBNs are necessary for public sales in online stores like Amazon and other places. The ISBN is encoded in a barcode along with the book price. An ISBN must be obtained from an authorized dealer such as Bowker for the ISBN to register to you as the publisher. If you purchase an ISBN from a non-authorized dealer such as a subsidy publisher, the ISBN will track back to that entity rather than to you even if you are told it is *your* ISBN. EBook Listing Services purchases one or more ISBNs in your name that will register to you as the publisher. We also provide barcodes with or without your book retail price encoded. If you as a client wish to change your book retail price even after your book has been published we will exchange your barcode for you and make sure your book is updated and remains on sale without a gap.

There are two general technologies used to create print books: Offset Printing is the old-school printing method around for over a hundred years that uses plates to create multiple books at once, usually at least 500 or 1000 books in each “print run.” Most traditional publishers prefer offset printing since they can project rapid sales of their books in multiple outlets soon after they are released. Many subsidy publishers also use offset printing which is unfortunately expensive and burdensome for the author since he or she has to pay a considerable amount of money up front to print and then store 500 or more books. Print on Demand (POD) technology, in contrast, creates books one at a time like a glorified copy machine. It came into use about the turn of the new millennium (year 2000). Books printed with POD are slightly more expensive per book unit, but have the advantage of allowing purchase of only as many books at a time as needed. The quality is virtually indistinguishable from offset printed books, making POD definitely the way to go for the smart self publisher.

The advantage with using POD technology as a self-publisher is that you only have to buy as many books as you want, directly from the printer, at the lowest price. You can order books online anytime you want. For example, if your book is 200 pages you can order copies online and have them shipped to you through Amazon in a week or two for less than $3.50 per copy.

Ebooks are another game-changer for self-publishers. These are electronic books that can be read on an ereader like a Kindle, Kobo, or Nook, or on a computer, tablet, or cell phone. What makes these so awesome is that the full book can be bought and appear on the device with just a few clicks. Ebooks have revolutionized book reading by offering something that is usually lower-priced, transportable, non-cluttering, and gives instant gratification.

An audiobook is read by a narrator and played back on an MP3 player. People are discovering audiobooks are great to listen to while driving, exercising, or resting. These seem to be the most recent popular wave of book reading.

The moment an author has put his ideas into fixed format (eg written or dictated) the work is copyrighted to him. All books/ebooks/audiobooks include a copyright statement in the form of © 2020 by John Smith. However, many people also like to formally register their copyright with the US Copyright Office (https://www.copyright.gov/registration/) for added security. Registering your copyright legally establishes the date that you created your work and would be useful, say, in court when proving that you were plagiarized. When you complete this process you will receive a certificate of copyright. Sometimes an author is tempted to rely on the “poor man’s copyright” in which he uses snail mail to send himself a copy of his manuscript, then keeps it sealed. The postmark date serves to date the registration. While this sounds reasonable, in point of fact the “poor man’s copyright” is not legally valid and shouldn’t be relied upon. Since correctly registering the work is inexpensive and simple, if you want proof of ownership it’s not a hardship to just do it right. EBook Listing Services can register your book with the US Copyright Office for you as an extra service.

If you are interested in seeing your book/ebook/audiobook in a public library, before publication you’ll need to first register the book with the Library of Congress (LOC). To register, as a self-publisher you’ll need to obtain a pre-assigned control number (PCN) at http://www.loc.gov/publish/pcn/. You’ll also need to hire a librarian to obtain the cataloguing-in-publication data (CIP data) that is essential for a library to consider your book. When your book is published, you’ll need to send a copy to the Library of Congress for their records. A book without LOC registration will not be considered for the public library. Keep in mind that even if you do register your book it is not guaranteed to be picked up by a library, only that it is eligible if you can convince the decision-makers to take it. That being said, public libraries are a great source for book sales and definitely worth considering for your marketing plan. EBook Listing Services can register your book with the LOC and obtain CIP data for you as an extra service.

Once you’ve created your book/ebook/audiobook files, you’ll need to find a distributor to make your book available for sale online. There are two common distributors for self-publishers that use print on demand (POD) technology: Ingram Spark and Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). Ingram Spark (http://www.ingramspark.com) is a well established book distributor that supplies books both online and to brick and mortar stores. Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) (http://www.kdp.amazon.com) is a branch of Amazon that gives the self-publisher access to free file uploads, inexpensive, high-quality book printing, wide book availability on Amazon, and marketing tools to help you sell your book. There are also ways to get the best of both Ingram Spark and KDP for extended distribution at the lowest cost and best financial return for the author. EBook Listing Services optimizes your book distribution plan as part of the client package.

This is the million dollar question. It’s important to remember that Amazon is estimated to list over 33 million books, and that’s a lot of books to compete against. You need effective marketing tactics to sell books. Email blasts, such as what many subsidy companies offer as a marketing extra, will in our company’s opinion not be effective because it’s yet one more piece of email that busy librarians and professionals are unlikely to even open, much less read. Effective marketing can go along at least two primary paths: advertising and promoting your book to groups of people, and using the search engine capabilities of websites including most notably Amazon to get the search engine to push your book to interested readers. In our company’s opinion, the latter course of SEO optimization is more powerful and less time-intensive to make sales because it piggybacks your book onto powerful Amazon. Amazon likes books to sell because it makes money, and if you can convince Amazon that your book has value it will suggest your book to interested buyers and get sales for you. This is the primary method that we use to help our clients get sales, and it really works.

Self-publishing is a great opportunity to create a home-based business if you want to write and publish multiple books. However, hiring a company to self-publish multiple books for you can get expensive. Self-publishing is a complex skill set that takes time to learn. Happily, the CEO of EBook Listing Services, Amy Deardon, has written two books that go step-by-step through the self-publishing process. She says these books reveal everything our company does to happily self-publish our clients. Self Publish for $100 or Less: Step-by-Step Guide to Format Your Book and E-Book, Get a Cover and ISBN, and Publish to Sell Special Effects for Your E-Book: Use HTML Templates without Knowing HTML to Professionally Format Your E-Book If you are interested in self-publishing multiple works, we recommend you hire us for your first book and have us show you how to complete each step. You can also consider purchasing Amy’s books to follow along. Even after you’ve published your book, you are free to call us to ask questions. There is no other self-publishing company we know of that will offer training like this to you, the author, as a routine benefit of working with us. We at EBook Listing Services believe in empowering you to become the best author and self-publisher you can be, and are happy to do what it takes to make it happen.

We truly believe that our self-publishing company is the best there is. We’ll give you a highly personalized, excellent publication experience that will leave you smiling and proud of your beautiful book/ebook/audiobook. We’d love to hear from you! Get in touch with us through our contact form.