Answers to most frequently asked questions: Can just anyone publish a book? Yes, you can do it! There are lots of ways to make it happen other than the usual: Write a book! How about these ideas: Record your family stories on tape during the holiday get-togethers, send me the recordings and photos, and I'll turn them into a family book! Send me your poetry, your Aunt Ida's recipe cards, the novel your Uncle Bud worked on for 20 years and never got published, and I'll turn them into a book! Give a publishing plan to a granddaughter who wants to be a writer, and she gets to publish her book! Publish your grandchildrens', nieces' and nephews' artwork and it becomes their very own book! Send me that dusty box of family letters and photographs in the attic, and I'll turn it into an heirloom for generations to come - a book! Everyone in your group or congregation can write a favorite story about the things they hold in common, and if you send them to me, I'll create a unique fundraiser - a book! There are lots of ways to go about it, limited only by your imagination. You can do it! Publish a book! Someone I know wants their book published. Can I give one as a present? If you are giving a publishing plan as a gift, just send the name and address of the recipient, and you'll get a gift certificate you can wrap and present to the recipient yourself, or if you'd rather, we can mail it directly to them. Deadline for gift certificates is two weeks before the date you need it in order for us to have the calligraphy completed and for you to receive it in the mail. How much does it cost? Self publishing a book is actually pretty easy, and the cost depends on what shape it is in when it gets to the publisher. For instance... If your book is already in the form of a proofread word document, contains no more than 25 images, and you want it in paperback form, it costs $999 to turn it into a book. That includes everything you'll need - ISBN, bar code, page layout, cover design, and printer submission fees. Once our work is done and we have submitted it to the printer, your work is available as a print-on-demand book and you can buy as few or as many copies as you want. On the other end of the scale, your book might be in the form of a box of letters and photographs you found in the attic that your grandparents wrote each other while they were courting, or a bunch of family stories you or someone in your family dictated onto some form of voice recorder. If that is the case, then your book needs a lot more work. "The Works" provides everything that would be needed, including all of the above plus typing, scanning, and editing (as opposed to just proofreading). The Works costs $3,500. Most books fall somewhere in the middle. They usually arrive as a computerized word document of some form and need proofreading or at least a significant number of corrections made to the document after the proof is sent to the author. A 100,000 word book in that shape that has to be proofread would cost $2,500. A 40,000-60,000 word book that didn't need proofreading but had 50 photos and a number of changes to be made after the proof was created might cost in the neighborhood of $1,500-$2,000, depending on the number of words and changes. So, it can be easy but more expensive - you send me a bunch of stuff and we create a book. Or, you can do more of the work yourself, in which case you pay the publisher significantly less. It all just depends on what you want to do. Do you have an artist you recommend for illustrations? We sure do! Raven OKeefe has a wonderful variety of styles, is reasonably priced, and most of all, is great fun to work with! We highly recommend her services. You may need to know that reasons she has never revealed to us, she refuses to draw cows. Buffalo are not a problem for her. Just those cows. What's the best way to reach you? One thing about formatting books is that it's unfortunately easy to get distracted and lose your place. For that reason, the phone goes unanswered while formatting. The quickest way to get a response is email: mcn@publishedbywestview.com. |
Published by Westview, Inc. P.O. Box 605 Kingston Springs, TN 37082 phone 615.646.6134 Copyright (c) 2008 Published by Westview, Inc. |