What are the differences between print-on-demand, self/subsidy and conventional publishers?
As we’ve discussed, your publishing options for professional publishing companies outside using a local printer to print your book, there are quite a few differences in what these companies do. I’m going to try to elucidate point by point what their differences are.
In terms of manuscript acceptance, print on demand has a high acceptance rate of manuscript submitted by authors. Self/subsidy publishers have a medium to high acceptances. For example, we don’t publish everything that is sent to us in a manuscript form. Conventional publishers, very low acceptance of manuscripts and that’s why they require literary agents to bring the manuscript to them.
Copy rate. Registering your copy with the Library of Congress. Print-on-demand publishers charge a fee. Conventional and self/subsidy publishers include that as a service.
Providing or procuring an ISBN number is provided by all three publishing company types. They will also register the copyright with the Library of Congress no matter what kind of publishing company it is.
Print-on-demand publishers vary by company in terms of the editorial services that they provide. Some insist on camera ready, meaning how the computer file submitted by the author, how it looks is how the book is going to look exactly in terms of layout and formatting.
For layout and formatting. For self-publishing companies and conventional publishers, it’s all done by the company itself on the author’s behalf. Editing services are provided by some print-on-demand companies on a contractual or fee-based basis. In the self and conventional publishers, self publishers typically will edit for syntax, grammar, spelling and things like that whereas the conventional publisher will guarantee some very editing in terms of re-writes. The author sometimes can lose control of the content of a book in certain areas with the conventional publisher. Type setting, preparing that manuscript to go to a printing facility to be prepared is rarely provided by print-on-demand companies. Self publishers and conventional publishers provide that type setting capability.
We’ve talked about cover design and illustrations earlier in this. In terms of cover design, print-on-demand companies typically charge a fee for that and do it in house or provide contractors to the author to accomplish that. Self publishers and conventional publishers provide cover design services and illustration services for the author. Now, when you get into some of the marketing and promotional services, they would effectively be oriented to major book wholesalers. There’s four or five major book wholesale companies in the United States and bookstores be they independent or chain bookstores. Print-on-demand companies rarely have relationships but though of the major print-on-demand companies do. Self publishers and conventional publishers have relationships with the wholesalers as well as the booksellers. Major internet retailers for print-on-demand companies, it varies. There are a lot of print-on-demand companies that can consist of one or two people in a small office doing this or some major print-on-demand companies. The major ones typically have relationships with major internet booksellers like Amazon.com. Self publishers and conventional publishers have those relationships as well the Amazon all over the world. Almost every publisher be they print-on-demand through the conventional publishers have their own websites where books can be purchased by consumers.
Print-on-demand means that books are printed as copies of the book that are ordered, so that’s how they fulfill orders for consumers that purchase a book. Most self/subsidy publishers or conventional publishers provide warehousing and fulfillment to services meaning that orders are processed, invoices are prepared, amounts too for the sales of those books are collected and obviously because they’re fulfilling orders for each title, they have significant warehouse and storage capabilities on the author’s behalf. Invoicing collections and storage for print-on-demand companies will vary dependent on which company it is.
The major differentiator between conventional publishers and print-on-demand and self publishers will be in terms of the royalties paid. Most print-on-demand and self publishers will pay a percentage of book sales based on commission rate if you will or royalty percentage in as much higher than conventional publishers. That will be an area of 40-50% typically whereas a conventional publisher has invested the money to publish the book, they’ve probably provided in advance to the author for the rights for the rights to publish that book so their royalties may be in the 8-10% area.
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