To ask about publishing firms

[Flower1333]

Probably not the right place to post this but I need advice re publishing a book , possibly a Children’s book online Does anyone know of reputable companies which won’t scam you ?
Thanks

I wouldn't touch Amazon with a barge pole ( speaking from experience of working with them for many many years with books) they're the only ones who make money from self publishing your book. It will get lost in the noise of all the free books on there. They're cut throat. Is it good? Have you thought about more traditional publishing, getting an agent? All depends if you 1) actually want people to read it 2) want to make some money.

I do need to do more research I’m just wondering about the Amazon option as surely wouldn’t get scammed there?
Plus, would possibly reach a wider audience?

Amazon will own the rights to your book and take a cut of every sale. You will also have no marketing department behind you, so you will be lucky to sell a dozen. I am not trying to be negative, but I think it is easy to get caught up in the fact that "publishing a book" is SO much more than actually getting it in print. That is the challenge. You need to have a tight book with professional editors, people who revise it, copy editors, illustrators, expert marketers, and entire teams of PR people to get one children's book. The actual part of getting it to the printers is relatively easy. The reason those books are successful is the entire team behind it. Getting a book published isn't simply hitting "ctrl+P", its going through that entire process to make sure your writing is in the best possible shape. No one, not even the most successful children's writers was able to knock out a book by themselves. JK Rowling often thanks her editors and says how integral they were to the books, and speaks of the long debates they got into to get Harry Potter just right.

Think about it this way, how many times have you bought things off of your friends? You do it out of politeness but no one actually makes a living off of it. If selling a product to friends was easy, there wouldn't be so many MLM scams out there.

That also means that if later down the road, you do meet a proper publisher, you will be unable to get it published through that route.

If you want to reach a wider audience, you need to go through a professional publishing route. There are many resources online. Go to the London Book Fair and network with people, find children's books you like and research who their agents and publishers are, set up informational interviews with those people. Many libraries and book stores will have author readings. Start going to those and chatting with the authors about their advice.

Children's publishing is notoriously competitive - do you genuinely have a new, unique or different story to tell? or niche? There are lots of smaller independent publishers who would take a look for you if it's good - forget Amazon though, they'll take the rights to your book and if it takes off you've lost that. Get a writers and artists yearbook and do your research. Having a good story isn't the half of it, marketing and sales support mean everything and if you aren't canny in that department then you need a publisher.

There is some fantastic advice here OP - I think the best question was the PP who asked why you wanted it published/to what end?

Also, if you are looking to traditionally publish (i.e. get an agent, approach publishers etc), then often they will want to do the illustrations in-house as they have people on staff anyway.

For illustrators, sometimes worth contacting art colleges that run illustration courses. A student starting out might be interested in order to build up their portfolio. For a picture book, where the illustrations are at least as important as the words, if not more so, you can offer to share joint profits.

Amazon will not own the copyright of your [general you] book. You as the publisher retain the copyright, decide what price to charge, even whether to unpublish it entirely.

Yes, Amazon will take a cut. So will a traditional publisher. The author's cut of a traditionally published book, as a % of the retail price, is a lot smaller than a Kindle author's cut. If you self publish a paper book, production and distribution costs have to be accounted for before you see any profit.

Publishing through Amazon isn't for everyone, but it can work well for people who have made an informed decision to go that route because it suits their circumstances. But I will repeat what I said above - it probably isn't suitable for an illustrated children's book.

Fantastic advice on here - I’m really grateful for all the wise advice!

@Flower1333

Last piece of advice, then I'll shut up

The next London Bookfair is in April at Olympia.

Might be a good idea to get all your research done on one day.

Do not go to the London Bookfair. It is incredibly expensive and is mainly for professionals. Do your research on the website I emailed you and look at the society of authors' website. Be aware that very few people get published and if they do make a living out of it. Furthermore children publishing is very competitive and overcrowded. Doesn't mean you should try but lower your expectations.

@Flower1333

Got no idea how much the London Bookfair is, because I get in free.

I've been twice and there were plenty of stands for authors. Mind you, I didn't pay to get in!

If you are fairly local, you could always hang around outside and pick up the show guides as people leave the event. The show guide has all the contacts you'll ever want, and plenty you won't.

Whisper it, but sometimes people ditch their badges too!

You can self publish, which involves finding editors, designers etc yourself and paying them directly; or you can use a publishing services firm, or a vanity press, which will cost you thousands.

The third option is to try to get a contract with a trade publisher. It's very difficult to do this if your work is less than stellar but if you're great, you'll do it. It costs you absolutely nothing.

If you self publish you are extremely unlikely to see any of your money back. The only book shops which will carry your book are the ones you sell it into yourself (ignore the claims the companies make: they will not get your books into bookshops).

Trade publishers get books into bookshops, and if they have the rights to do so they might well sell your book to publishers across the world. You will earn less money per book if you trade publish but you'll not have to invest in the publication process either, so it's swings and roundabouts.

I read somewhere that the average self published book sells fewer than 100 copies. Most trade published books sell a few thousand, at least, and some sell many more than that.

If you want to learn more AbsoluteWrite.com is a great forum.

Beware of self publishing evangelists who will tell you that trade publishing is dead, etc. It's alive and flourishing.

PS: Trade fairs like the London Book Fair are for people who work in trade publishing, not for authors or self publishers. If you want a trade deal, get yourself an agent. There's an organisation called something like SCWBI which is great for people who write for children.

Bookouture

Are you looking to sell copies or just make some copies for friends and family? I can have a look through my receipts if it's just for your own records - I used InDesign and published a paperback in around 100x copies with a lovely colour cover for a relative. Several of us pitched in with editing and revising text and images though.

Great advice again!
Life of climb.....could you possibly see how much it was for the copies - I would be looking to sell copies .I’ve still got the hurdle of the illustrator as well!

If you want to sell copies to people you aren't related to, self-publishing is not the way to go. Querying agents doesn't take much time at all once you have your synopsis and query written, so what is there to lose?

How are you going to sell copies, though, Flower? How do you intend to do that? Adult books can sell on Kindle, but I can't see children's picture books selling well as people want a hard copy.

You won't be able to talk to agents at the LBF. They have back-to-back appointments with editors from all over the world. You won't be able to do as someone suggested above and contact agents to ask them for a chat. However on Twitter there is @askagent where you can ask questions.

If you want to go down the vanity publishing route, where you pay a lot of money for the pleasure of seeing your books in a printed copy, eg to give to your own and your friends' children, that's fine. Expensive, though.

If your goal is to get your books on sale to the public, you have to look at agents. Nobody gets a publishing deal without an agent. You have to be on top of your game with agents - you have to know who's interested in what, how it's presented to the agent, how to write a synopsis etc. There is a lot of hard work involved and many manuscripts are knocked back because the author simply hasn't followed the basic rules. That's a sign of being an amateur and consequently a lot of extra work for an agent.

Think carefully about your goal. If you are thinking of spending money at this stage then self publishing is the way to go. People are wrong to slag off Amazon - I had a couple of books on there and sold a few thousand copies. Once I reached a certain level in the charts then I was in the recommended books that are marketed via email to Amazon customers. I wouldn't have been able to pay for that - it would cost a fortune.

I think (figures going back about 3 years) that I got 70% of the value of a book (exc VAT) if the book was sold at £1.99 or more. If it was less, I got 30%. So a book on sale at £2 would have £0.40p taken off for tax and then I'd get £1.12 for the book.

However, ebook sales are usually - as in 99.99999% of the time - very low. If you look at the forum on Kindle you'll see a lot of people suffering. If you look at a lot of the free books you'll see books that should have been either edited or forgotten.

Again, as I said, I think children's books with pictures wouldn't be selling well on Kindle, though YA books do sell well.

It's really a very fast way to lose money, in all honesty, Flower.

I always ask the same questions as PPs upthread - "Why do you want to publish and who for?" If the answer is not in any way a commercial prospect, I always say it's totally a valid choice to go ahead anyway, as there is a personal thrill to be had from publishing your book, but if you are doing it for profit there are hundreds of less difficult (and less demoralising) ways to make money.

Trade publishers struggle to make margin. Excellent established authors with great ideas get turned down every day. If you are set on publishing and selling copies, then you should probably submit to some agents anyway, or a reading service, and get feedback. That can then inform you as to what to do next.

Try these guys:
literaryconsultancy.co.uk/editorial/fees-and-submissions/
£130 for 2 picture book ideas.
This is a good price with a very established agency that will offer constructive and realistic feedback.

As I say - publishing a book is definitely do-able for anyone. Not making a loss from doing so is very difficult. Making money from it is extremely rare. So just bear all that in mind.

I'd heard that publishers want to choose their own illustrator. It's usually the illustrations that sell a book. You would have to lose a percentage to the illustrator - I would imagine that would be a very high percentage.

Again, as I said, I think children's books with pictures wouldn't be selling well on Kindle, though YA books do sell well.

As Disguise says. eBook sales for illustrated children's books are shockingly low. Honestly - you'd gasp in horror at the sales figures for popular/well-known/celeb brand authors who otherwise sell in truckloads for hard copies. No one buys picture books or highly illustrated on Kindle or other eBook as the method of reproducing them is extremely basic and no one reads a bedtime story to their child on an eReader. There are notable exceptions in the industry for digital children's books, but that's a different kettle of fish entirely.

So, you have to ditch ebook as a production method - and then you are into a very costly endeavour. So proceed only with extreme caution and understanding that you are very unlikely to make money...

publishers want to choose their own illustrator. It's usually the illustrations that sell a book. You would have to lose a percentage to the illustrator - I would imagine that would be a very high percentage.

In a regular trade deal, the publisher marries the illustrator to the text. They pay fees/advances for both parties (author & illustrator). They pay royalties equally on a picture book or highly illustrated book, so 50% each as a standard deal.

If you were producing your own picture book, you can commission an illustrator for a flat fee and ownership of copyright. But then you're bearing all that cost of the illustration up front. Or you could find a student starting out who's willing to do it for free/low fee/share of profits who keeps their copyright.

In the commercial world, the only way publishers make money from picture books is to sell the foreign rights to other publishers so they can produce "co-edition" production runs which keeps the printing costs low. If it's not co-editionable (and there are absolutely MASSES of reasons why it wouldn't be), it usually doesn't get commissioned.

That won't be open to you anyway - all the upfront costs of producing the book will be yours to bear: illustration fee, editing fee, design fee (cover & interiors), listing/admin fees for ISBNs, amazon listings etc, paper stock, delivery/distribution, marketing etc etc - the list goes on and on.

So I wouldn't touch self-publishing an illustrated young children's book with a bargepole myself if I wanted to make any money.

Probably being naive here, but if I self publish and go around some shops myself to see if they will sell my books , I wonder what my chances of success are ? Does anyone have much experience of this?

Probably being naive here, but if I self publish and go around some shops myself to see if they will sell my books , I wonder what my chances of success are ? Does anyone have much experience of this?

I feel like I'm shockingly pissing on your parade on this thread - I'm very sorry, truly! - but yes, I do have experience of this, from the bookshop side.

Think about where you might sell. What bookshops are around? Waterstones, WH Smith and ... your friendly independent local? Maybe a few gift stores/garden centres that might take it if the "right fit"?

All the high street chainstores have centralised buying. Very few have any discretion or budget for local independent stock decisions. Independent bookshops operate on extremely tight margins. You'll need to offer at least a 50% discount, and usually on a sale or return basis, where is stock hasn't shifted within a timeframe e.g. 12 weeks they'll send it back to you. Most independent bookshops might order 2 or 3 copies, certainly no more than 5.

Every bookshop employee has the experience of sadly needing to turn away self-published authors...

I agree. Every author wants their book in every bookshop. The shops have to make a decision - that's either done locally (in small independent shops) or centrally (in large chains.)

There is no chance in this world of getting into the chains. Every editor has a bunch of books they want in there - it's very highly competitive. In the end the shops want to sell, so they will go with the major publishers as they know they produce great books by either up and coming or well known authors.

You might sell a few on a sale-or-return basis to your local independent bookshop if a) it's fantastic quality and b) they already know you, ie you've been a regular customer. Otherwise you'd be very hard pushed to sell any to them.

I'm sorry, but all this information is online. There's absolutely tons and tons of stuff out there - interviews with publishers, agents, self-publishers, shop-keepers etc.

@Flower1333

I did know someone who self published a children's book.

They were experts in marketing (albeit in another industry) so I thought they might have a chance.

The thing is, the industry they were from is far more modern. So the dynamics of marketing and distribution were way ahead in some aspects (the machinery of the supply chain) but regressive in one important way. The person had all the charm of an Apprentice candidate in the 'don't sack me, sir Alan, sack her' section of that ghastly reality show.

Even with their impressive sales skills, they were unable to get anyone to sell their children's book. (Although this particular person probably described it as a 'world class human start up reading solution'.)

The big chains order everything centrally, and the independents (which have all been royally screwed by the publishers, who offer bigger discounts to the chains, so they can sell cheaper and make a profit, and even higher discounts to Amazon, which I am convinced is the devil in corporate form. Amazon actually wants to own publishing and kill off the olde worlde publishers and yet they obligingly helped this monster to help itself to their territory.)

So it's near impossible to get anyone to take your book on.

Selling it online is harder still, because nobody has heard of you, and Cyberspace is a cold, soulless world. It's like outer space, only with less atmosphere.

Think about it. When was the last time you bought a book from a complete stranger online?

For some reasons, celebrities have more kudos than we uncelebrated people, so they have more chance of flogging books.

However, if you are thinking of writing a children's book for the sheer joy of having something you can share with loved ones, that is beautiful. Sales to complete strangers will be really hard though.

The books I loved reading to my daughter were varied.

At first, they are pretty simple, lyrically. Some were quite tactile, with about four words per page and lots of stuff to feel. The vivid colours and the images are as attention grabbing as the words.

That is deliberate because the young mind is developing. Synapses are being constructed and neural pathways laid down. They are processing information from all kinds of different sources and somehow piecing it together to make sense of it.

I remember one in a series called "That's not my Dinosaur"

The plot was so basic even I could follow it.

on the first page, there is a picture of a dinosaur (one of the large herbivores) with a raised slightly abrasive portion that kids were encouraged to feel.

The words on the pages said "That's not my dinosaur, its skin is too rough"

Reading to a child is more an activity, as they enjoy sitting with you, turning the page, feeling it, listening to your voice. I'm endlessly fascinated about how a child's brain processes all this complex input and somehow puts it together and works out the complexities of our language.

Lord knows how the young human brain makes sense of all this. But they do. They learn language from scratch.

It's a lot harder to write a children's book than people think. It takes genius to make things look easy.

Anyway, back to the self publisher.

He produced a professional looking book. But it was awful. That narrative was far too convoluted. Massively long sentences that would drive an IT salesman's eye off the page, let alone a young child.

When the book never took off, this person took it personally and got very bitter. Last I heard he was seen in reception of a do, angry and trollied, ranting at random people.

I think what I'm trying to say is.

Start simple with an audience of one and see how it goes from there.

It is worth going to a trade fair, if you can sneak in free, as it gives you a glimpse into the awful realities of book publishing and the people who inhabit that world.