Copyright Issues with Book Covers

 

Not every picture you see on the Internet is there for your own use. All you may do is admire it. The majority of them are copyrighted.

 

There are three ways to avoid copyright problems:

1.      Use something that is in the public domain.

2.      Use a stock site – and our favourite is Pixabay, as the pictures are not only copyright free but also free. And they provide them in the right sizes. You do need to check the license though. And we do pay a regular monthly amount, voluntarily, which is distributed with other monthly amounts between the artists. You could also contribute to that artist if you like.

3.      Commission a picture or even the whole cover.

 

There are three problems with the latter:

1.      It’s a much more for us working with an artist or a cover designer. There are technical, artistic and house style consideration to take into account and there is often a lot of discussion about this. 

2.      We need to sell between 250 and 1000 books to cover the cost of commissioning a picture or cover. Often the author will offer to pay for this or offer some of the costs but this muddies the waters even more for 3. below.    

3.      Who owns the copyright on pictures / covers such as these? Professional graphic artists tend to license us for the cover up to a certain number of copies and then we have to pay again. There is also limited use in marketing situations. There is no limit at all in the covers we produce ourselves and we even allow the authors unlimited use of the materials.           

 

So, on the whole we’re happier controlling full production of the cover. Sometimes, however, we commission an artist ourselves especially for novels – this particularly applies to The Red Telephone and Walela but we make sure we get full rights to the material afterwards.      

If people write a review, where do they publish them?

 

One of the main reason we ask for reviews is so that we can get fifty plus on Amazon which really makes our book more visible there. Once we have fifty or more reviews, Amazon becomes much more proactive in promoting the book. Even if they’re not all five star.  

 

However, you have to have either bought the book from Amazon or have spent enough with them otherwise to be able to post there.

 

We generally ask that reviewers post to Amazon, Good Reads and Storygraph. You can use the same one for all three. Anyone can post on Good Reads or Storygraph.

Reviews don’t have to be long, but reviewers should try to say why they thought the book was excellent if they gave five stars and where it fails at all if they give fewer.  

 

It’s great if reviewers can send the review to the author who can use it on their own  social media and web sites in turn might forward it to us. We keep three reviews on our online bookshop. If you think the latest one is better than the one you have there, just give us a shout.

 

We’ll often anyway flag up a review to our Facebook page followers.

 

Reviewers might also put up their reviews on their own web site or social media.  

   

    

Feel-Good Stories by Sarah Swatridge

 

How we came to publish this one

Sarah found us and then became a regular contributor to CaféLit. In fact she has become very involved in everything we do. We have also published another of her books and I’m pleased also to report that her submission to our Magi anthology has been accepted. Sarah also reviews for us regularly.     

The title

This is just what the stories are all about. They are engaging and heart-warming.     

Some notes about the process

This went through the normal three stages of editing. In many cases this was an extremely light touch as many of the stories have been published before.

The cover

Sarah worked with our designer to find the right cover for the book. We think it helps the book to appeal to romantics and to those who want a holiday read. It also suggests the book might make a good gift for someone.

Some notes about style

These stories are simply written. There is a good narrative balance of description, action, dialogue and inner monologue.   

Who we think the reader is

This book is for the reader who wants to relax and feel a little better about the world. They offer a warm blanket or a ray of sunshine.

What else

We’re sure anyone who reads these stories will want to follow Sarah and enjoy more of her work.  

Review copies

It’s always great if you can buy the book and give us a review. Just click on the link to be taken to our bookshop. If you would like to review and you are strapped for cash, just get in touch for a free PDF or e-book file.

 

Grab your copy here.        

Care to review this book?

 We can offer a PDF or a Kindle file. Get in touch if you'd like to help. 

 

 

To Be… To Become is the theme of the 2018 Waterloo Festival Writing Competition. It is also the title of the e-book, which contains the sixteen winning entries. Some fantastic writing was offered and all of it was potentially publishable. We chose these because they told a good story, had a strong voice and were imaginative in their interpretation of the theme.

Entrants were asked to produce a short story or a monologue. Style was diverse and each story is completely different from the others.

How do our ‘launch team’ read the book pre-launch? Will we get an online version we can share via email?

 

Once the book is at the printer and loaded up to Amazon (if appropriate) with a release date and pre-order facility we send you four different versions of the cover, (three different sizes and a 3D one), a PDF, an epub file (readable on any e-reader), an order form for your book that allows you a 25% (up to fifty books) or 35% (fifty-one plus books) discount and an updated version of our marketing plan. We encourage you to offer all your family, friend, fans and followers the book to read and review.  

 If you send it out before the release date you will need to remind your readers  on release day to post their reviews on platforms such as Amazon (if they qualify), good reads (no qualification needed) and Story Graph (also no qualification needed). Your readers can also post to their own platforms and they can also send you, and maybe us, a copy of the review.  We do ask that after you have fifty reviews on Amazon you don’t give out any more free copies. We need some people to actually buy the book! 

We also send out requests for reviews to our team of reviewers. Would you be interested in joining our reviewing team?             

The cost of producing a book

 

There was an interesting article about costs of producing a book in The Author. It cited  figures for a print run of 3000 books from one publisher. They reckoned on a profit of between £0.46 to £0.21 per unit profit. Print per unit was costing them £2.50 - £3.00

 

The latter surprises me as I’d always thought that as we use print-on-demand our print per unit is higher.  However, my own Natascha’s  Story  is £2.78 per unit though a heftier book like Face to Face with the Führer is  £5.15. We do however have a better-looking profit margin.  If you study for example Natascha’s sales sheet, the sale of ten copies has made £8.15 for the company and £8.15 for the author.  So, 81.5p per book. Remember, on manual orders we have to pay shipping and a print run fee. Face to Face with the Führer on twenty books made £17.03, so about 85p for the company and the author per book.

 

Also remember my OH, aka our designer and I don’t take a fee. We take what is left after we have paid other costs. Natascha so far has cost us £77.4 and all bills aren’t in yet – we may be asked for five books for the Legal Deposit Libraries. For some books we commission a cover. This generally costs about £250. And sometime we pay editor and this can cost up to £1000 though averages £498. In fact the company owes us £666.96.   

Nevertheless, it all looks quite respectable.  

Book fair at Salford University

This was so successful that I have decided to pursue other opportunities to take part in book fairs as well as gift and craft fairs.  

You wouldn’t normally expect to sell a lot of books at a fair visited mainly by students but visitors to the stall did buy quite a few and it wasn’t just the staff that were willing to spend money.   

Perhaps more importantly I’ve managed to recruit more reviewers and readers.

So, I think I’ll now try to attend a few more fairs.

I’ve also decided to buy five copies of each book we publish, to take along to the fair and to offer in bundles.

I’m actually buying the books myself and awarding royalties to the authors as if the books had sold at retailer rate. So, it shows up on our books as the book selling at 65% of RRP. Of course, I can buy the books at a very reasonable rate for the printer and I’m pricing them to cove the printing cost and the amount we assign to authors. I’ll keep in a stock of fifty or so book and top them up on a rota basis. I’ll try to take along to each fair a selection of all the different types of books we produce.

So, on sales sheets you will see a Book Fair and it will look exactly like a retail outlet. On the All Titles sheet there will be a column labelled BF and this shows which book s have been bought for book fairs.

The fairs themselves can be fun and you get to talk to a lot of people so I’m going to put a few words about this on the Marketing Plan for Authors document.