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RockWay Press ® If Maxwell Perkins were alive, he'd want to work here.™ |
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Print-on-Demand (POD) Self-Publishing
Print on Demand is simply Digital Printing, which has made it cheaper to print small runs of books for lower prices, has allowed publishers to discard warehouse storage of massive numbers of books, and has allowed unscrupulous printers to disguise themselves as "publishers." Though Print on Demand, or POD, is merely a name for the newest technology, it has gained negative connotations because of the large numbers of self-published authors using POD companies to print their books. Sometimes the authors know that their books are being self-published and that the company with whom they are dealing is only a printer posing as a publisher. Unfortunately, many times, the unsuspecting authors do not know. They believe that their book is actually being published rather than simply printed. Because these companies no longer call the process "self-publishing" or themselves a "vanity press," some authors do not realize that their books are not really being published. POD houses are not publishers. They are merely printers posing as publishers in order to make absurdly large amounts of money from inexperienced writers. One very well-known POD house accepted Herman Melville's classic novel Moby-Dick from me, under the original title but under my name as author. Recently, a group of famous writers each wrote a chapter of a novel and submitted the book to the same POD house which accepted Melville's Moby-Dick from me. None of the chapters, characters, plots, settings, etc. were related to each other, so the novel written by these authors made absolutely no sense whatsoever. The POD house accepted accepted the nonsensical book. After the carefully designed and planned hoax was revealed in an exposé by the New York Times, the POD "publisher" claimed that an "inexperienced" editor had accepted the book "without reading it carefully or thoroughly". The POD house claimed that the errant editor had been reprimanded and released from her job. Another well-known POD house has changed its name and web-site address several times in the last couple of years. (For some reason, however, the "publisher" never changes its address, printed on the verso of the copyright page, so it is extremely easy to track the "publisher" each time it changes its name.) Despite inquiries, no explanations (or responses, even) are given for the continuing name changes of this particular POD house. Why Writers Don't Recognize This Form of Self-Publishing Print-on-Demand (POD) "publishing" doesn't ask the writers for very much money in advance, if any, and the printers call it by euphemisms, so writers believe that POD "publishing" is not self-publishing. After all, the writers think, they didn't "pay" to have their book published. Sometimes the authors only pay a relatively reasonable "design fee" or a "packaging fee" or a "production fee." Or their manuscript is accepted as an E-book for no cost whatsoever, and the author pays a small (also reasonable) additional fee to have his book also "published" in paperback. Copyright Even worse, most POD "publishers" virtually always buy the copyrights and all subsidiary rights from the unsuspecting authors. The POD publisher then owns the book in its entirety: the author no longer owns his book or has any rights over it. In those cases, it is clearly stated in the POD contract what the author is giving away to the POD house, which is, in short, everything. If you sell your copyright, the book no longer belongs to you, and any monies made from that book do not belong to you. The POD company probably doesn't read the books it accepts, and it usually accepts everything submitted. If the author wants copies of his book, he often has to pay the full cover price for them. It's then the author's responsibility to do any distribution, to request bookstores to buy his book from him, and to do all publicity for his book. Publicity Now, it's actually good for an author to do publicity for his published book, and to contact his local bookstore to let the Events Coordinator know the book is available and that the author is able to do readings, meet with bookclubs (which often ask bookstore employees for recommendations), and signings. However, the author should not be supplying the bookstore with copies of his book. If the bookstore wants the author to do a reading, the Events Coordinator will contact the store's distributor and order the books for the store to sell. The author should also not have to pay the bookstore to do a reading there. Bookstores get a percentage of the book's cover price when they sell a book, so they have no reason to ask the author for money. Bookstores ask self-published authors for money to do a reading because they don't know whether or not the book will sell, so the bookstore wants the money for allowing the author to use their facilities. Bookstores sometimes also ask the authors to pay to have their self-published books stocked. That's because the bookstores know that (a) they won't be getting any money from the printer posing as a publisher, (b) they won't be able to return the copies of the book that don't sell, as they can with legitimate publishers, so they'd lose any money that the bookstore spent on the book, and (c) it's unlikely that many copies of the book will sell, even locally, so the bookstore won't earn any money on the book. If the author has to buy copies of his own book from his publisher (usually paying full cover price) and take them to the bookstore himself in order to do a reading, then the book is most likely self-published, no matter what the "publishing company" claims. If the author's books do not sell and the bookstore is not permitted to return unsold books to the publisher, the book is most likely self-published, whether it's admittedly identified as such or whether it's "disguised" with the euphemism POD. If the author has to sign a contract with the bookstore in order to do a reading and pay the bookstore any kind of fee whatsoever in order to do a reading there, then the author's book is self-published and the author's "publisher" is not a legitimate one. It is a printer posing as a publisher. When a book is self-published, even if the printer calls it "Print on Demand", the book is self-published, and the author will, no doubt, have to pay full cover-price if he wants additional copies of his own book, and if anyone else actually buys it, the POD company gets the money because the author has sold his copyright. The author no longer owns his own book. Royalties from POD "Publishers" It is highly unlikely that the author will ever see any royalties from a POD "publisher," no matter how many copies of the book he sells. If the author does receive a royalty check, it will probably be less than $10, even if the author has sold over 2,000 copies of his book (which, at a cover price of $13.95 and a royalty rate of 10%, should net the author a royalty check of $2,790.00 before taxes). RockWay is a Traditional Publisher RockWay Press is a traditional publisher. We only read manuscripts after the author or agent has successfully queried us and gotten us interested in the book. If a query is successful, we request approximately 25 pages of the completed manuscript. It those pages maintain our interest, we request the entire manuscript. RockWay does not accept every manuscript it reads. In fact, approximately 90% or more of the manuscripts that successfully make it through our rigorous query and evaluation process are still rejected. The books we reject are often very well written. Sometimes they are rejected because of marketing reasons; for example, we do not accept books written by scholars for other scholars since we would not know how to market such books. (Manuscripts written by scholars for a lay audience can be sold in bookstores.) Sometimes the books are rejected because RockWay can not afford to publish them. At this time, for instance, we cannot afford the cost of the paper needed to print children's color picture books. Therefore, we do not accept them, no matter how well they're written and illustrated. Books can be rejected because we already have several books on the same topics, because the plot is too predictable though the book is relatively well written, because we don't like the subject matter. Books are rejected for all sorts of reasons, and many of those reasons have nothing to do with the actual writing of the book. RockWay's Printer After our books are revised (by the author, if necessary, along the editor's guidelines), copy-edited, and production-designed, we send our books out to a respected printer who prints them digitally. Formerly, our printer called itself a POD printer. Now, because of the negative connotations of the term "POD", it calls itself a "Print to Order" (PTO) printer. Our printer, Lightning Source, prints books for publishers all over the world. That is all LSI does: print books. It does not distribute, store, warehouse, or sell them. Lightning Source is only a printer. Bookstore & Online Sales After printing, RockWay Press' books are wholesaled and distributed by Ingram and by Baker & Taylor. As far as we know, only bookstores may order books from those distributors. Individual authors can no longer order single or small numbers of their books from either company. We also have contracts with Borders.com, Barnes&Noble.com, and Amazon.com to carry RockWay's books online. RockWay's authors, who are permitted to buy their books at a 30% discount if they wish, may also sell their own books from their websites. Most traditional publishers do not allow authors to resell their copies of discounted books because the publisher then does not get any money from the sales. Author's Discount At RockWay, we believe that if an author wishes to do the work of selling his own book, from his website, at conventions, at bookclub meetings, etc, then the author is more than welcome to do so. The author may be able to reach non-traditional audiences, and the point of publication is to get your book out there, to get your name recognized, and to get sales — for your current and for your future books.But RockWay's authors cannot but those books from either out printer or our distributor. No traditional publisher operates in that manner. RockWay does not pay the author royalties on discounted books because RockWay is not receiving any bookstore-sales monies on those books, but the author is, in essence, receiving a 30% "royalty" on books he sells himself. It's the least he deserves for doing all that work. Bookstore Readings & Publicity Our authors do not set up their own readings with bookstores, order the books that the bookstore will sell, or have anything to do with handling the money at the bookstore when customers buy our authors' books. RockWay has a respected, experienced, and award-winning publicist who takes care of those things for the author (as well as arranging television, radio, or print interviews; and sending out copies of the author's book for reviews with respected national publications), as does virtually every traditional publisher. Our authors do not pay for the work our publicist does (unless they wish to hire her privately to do additional advertising and publicity which RockWay will not be doing). Additional Questions on POD? Preditors and Editors: A Guide to Publishers and Publishing Services for Serious Writers (http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/peba.htm) Preditors and Editors: Some General
Rules for Spotting a Scam Publisher Vanity Publishers Publishing Exchange: Publishing Your Book Print-on-Demand & E-Book Publishers Which Publishers Suck? What is POD?
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