At the Printer

Hello every one and thank you for joining in today.

Where to begin. So many thoughts, but how to put into words. As a writer, that often is not a problem. Today however, we want to explain our process without overbearing our readers. As much as this blog is for you, our readers, it is also an account of our struggles and time consuming process we are going through to get our book published. So where to begin… Ah yes, the publishers.

Publishers can be good or bad. One publisher offered to publish our book for $5,000. Well, actually, not really publish our book. You see, they would “edit” our book – even though it has already been edited, and then they would have one of their designers design our cover. Now here I can understand. At first, I thought we had an awesome cover, but powerpoint only allows you to do so much. The cover did not sparkle or shine and therefore it was good, but not “Eye Popping WOW.” Also, how do you take what you have written in a Microsoft Word document, and turn it into the correct format for your book? This is what a publisher does. This publisher would do all this, and then set us up with an Amazon account and KDP publishing, to print the book on demand. So, virtually, we would spend $5,000 for their services, and then pay whatever Amazon charges for printing the book and their commission, and get 100% of the profits. Sound like a good idea? Not really. In fact, after talking with our printer, the cost of printing a book is huge. A lot more than we anticipated. We were expecting to sell our book for $9.99. We had no idea the cost of printing is more than that. Mind you, we are not in our venture to become the next millionaire. This is a fun project that we want to share with our readers.

So we didn’t spend $5,000 on that publisher. After all, if you pay a publisher $5,000 for upfront services, once the book is sent over to Amazon, they have no real interest in your book at all. They have their money and everything they do after that is free to them. They would rather go to the next author and get paid. Understandable.

We look for a literary agent, but I would much prefer the book to be out by Christmas. Some agents took the time to get back to us right away and were very kind in their replies. However, waiting for an agent to say yes is one thing, but then they ask for the entire manuscript, and could still say no. All the while, Christmas is coming. So we decided to self-publish the book. This is where God took over.

Researching self-publishing is exhausting. There are a tone of websites and “webinars” along with a whole lot of wasted time. Free webinar, but then you have to pay for materials that will help you through the process. Thanks, but I was looking for more. Then I found “Authorlab.pro.” This is a website that is by authors for authors. I was amazed at how everything worked. Tutorials, software and everything we needed right at our fingertips. We designed a new cover. You will LOVE it! They even have software which transformed our Word document into book format. Amazing. I cannot tell you enough about this website and what it has done for us. And the best part? Although it is not free, it is under $100. We did everything the publisher above was going to do for us, and more. Now our book is at a printer and we are working on getting it printed.

Remember earlier when I mentioned our printer? Paper cost has risen drastically. There are upgrades, and this and that which add to the cost of the book, that we could do. Pricey. However, books two and three are bigger than book one. Svenska Handelsbanken is 67,000 words or so. Book two is 84,000 and book three is 73,000. If we make book one with a ton of upgrades, and then do not do it for books two and three to keep the cost down, that is not fair to our readers. If we make everything even across all books, it will be a better fit for you, our readers. Currently, Svenska Handelsbanken is set to be sold for $19.99. Even though books two and three are bigger, we can still keep the cost of each book at $19.99. Our fun project is not about getting rich, but sharing our story with all of you.

We have discussed e-book. My and I have gone back and forth on this. She loves the idea as many people only read e-book, but I feel that takes away from the old style of reading.

Here is where you come in. Please let us know, either by emailing us at info@welby909.com or messaging us on our Facebook page, Svenska Handelsbanken. We want to know your thoughts. Should we make both a printed copy and e-book? What is your preference to read?

Thank you again to all of our readers. You make us who we are. Thank you for reading.