Independent Publishing:

On-Demand Book Self-Publishing and Distribution -
Internet Meets The Presses and Allows You to Publish Print Books For Under $ 1000

Trafford On-Demand Publishing Service
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/ authors.html?15020054-20905aaa
= breakthrough tool
Online service

On-demand Publishing MEETS Internet and the larger public.
A well tested solution finally finds its way to brave new authors.

Have you written a book, training materials or how-to guide that others might want to buy? Consider an amazing service created by self-publishing authors for self-publishing authors the innovative Trafford on-demand publishing service™. For USD $990, your book will be published and available for purchase by book buyers around the world. This offering is labelled "The Best Seller Package".

Another offering, the "Entrepreneur Package," priced at USD $679, is designed for those who opt to handle publicity and distribution themselves, but still want the advantages of on-demand printing and Internet order fulfilment.

The "Legacy Package," valued at USD $499, assists the author with publishing's legal and administrative aspects, and with preparing a perfect-bound book with a full-colour cover. Lamination is optional at an extra charge. As with the other two publishing packages, you may order as many copies of your book as required, when you need them.

On-demand publishing is a practical combination of conventional publishing tasks, print-on-demand manufacturing and Internet marketing and retailing. Using print-on-demand equipment, complete books are manufactured one-at-a-time to fill incoming orders -- which means the self-publishing author need not make a large investment in pre-printed books stored in a warehouse.

Trafford Publishing handles publishing's legal and administrative requirements, helps with publicity and manages the retail sales. Selling directly to the customer over the Internet is very cost-effective and opens a global market for your book. Whichever package is chosen, the author retains copyright, sets the retail price, decides on design and appearance, and directs publicity work.

A useful set of Author's guidelines are available online and provide detailed information about the on-demand publishing services offered, with links to detailed explanations, technical specification, contract, checklists and other goodies.

See for example the useful section called Author's Toolkit at: http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/ authortoolkit.html?15020054-20905aaa
which provides support and guidance in preparing and meeting the challenging production and publishing steps of a book.

The sections contains:

a) Publishing Steps
Find out exactly all of the steps required to bring a book publishing project from start to end.
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/steps.html? 15020054-20905aaa

b) The Author's Checklist
This section provides a very clear and simple overview of what the Author should do to ensure a reliable progress of his book. During the publishing process, the author has many important responsibilities, and this checklist helps him/her to anticipate and know which are the most important ones among these. http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/checklist.html? 15020054-20905aaa

c) Select the right package for your book
On this page you can easily compare and evaluate which one of Trafford on-demand publishing service offerings fits best your needs. The three offerings are presented side by side and you can easily identify key differences among them.
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/ yourbookneeds.html? 15020054-20905aaa

d) Contract
Further to the above you can also access the full contract that you will need to sign with Trafford Publishing available at: http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/contract.html? 15020054-20905aaa

e) Metadata form
This form contains information about you, your organization and about the book to be published. You will need to fil out this form in order to make the process start. Find this form at:
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/metaform.html? 15020054-20905aaa

f) Technical Specifications
This is a well prepared page containing all of the required Technical Specifications that you need to meet to publish your book, available at:
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/techspecs.html? 15020054-20905aaa

g) Price Calculator
This static information reference table allows you to estimate exactly the final cost of your publication, by allowing you to include all extras and options you may want to add or consider.
Find the Price Calculator at:
http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/ printingcosts-usa.html? 15020054-20905aaa

*Cost and book pricing*

When you publish your book with the Trafford Publishing service you have all the control on the price at which you will sell your book. To allow for appropriate discounts (from 15% to 50%) to libraries, retailers and distributors, and to have an adequate author's royalty, Trafford strongly suggests that the retail price be set by the author at a level 2.5 times the single-copy printing cost or higher.

As an example of cost, a 200 pages (1 side=1 page) book with a full color cover will cost you USD $ 5.37 per copy printed. Depending on the print quantity ordered you may reach a bottom price of USD $4.90 per book (that is for example for over 1000 copies printed).

In this last case Trafford would suggest to sell that book at least at USD $ 14.43. Which makes a lot of sense. There may actually be categories of reports, dossiers or special research white papers which may be sold for several hundred dollars a copy (take for example Brandon-Hall's ones that go from USD $ 395 to $ 695 each. See the "Publications" section at
http://www.brandon-hall.com).

*Obtaining an ISBN number*

These guys go all the way to also provide you with an official ISBN number for your book. Find out all the details about it at: http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/ISBN.html? 15020054-20905aaa

As you probably well know, the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) system uniquely identifies all books published worldwide. All parts of the book trade use these identification numbers for inventory control, ordering and accounting. About a million ISBNs are assigned each year for English-language publications alone.

An ISBN is a unique and unchangeable number, identifying one title (specifically one binding or edition of the title) published by one publisher. An example of a Trafford-assigned ISBN is 1-55212-000-7 which identifies Yukon Channel Charts. The first six digits identify the publisher as Trafford. The next three digits (000 in this example) uniquely identify Yukon Channel Charts within one of the blocks of ISBNs allotted to Trafford. The final digit (7) is a mathematical check digit.

Because all publishers' contact information is kept current at common reference sources, such as R.R. Bowker's Books-In-Print and BookData UK's databases, bookstores and librarians worldwide can determine quickly where to purchase a copy.

The ISBN identifies a "publisher," rather than the author, since people in the book trade expect to order from the publisher. Although you are "self-publishing" using Trafford's service, the book trade considers Trafford as the "publisher" for ISBN purposes.

Trafford staff will immediately assign an ISBN to your book when you sign on. They will use that ISBN to identify work documents, for generating barcodes and to support other communication and logistic activities.

*Royalties*

Royalties are 60% of the gross margin on each sale, while the final retail price will be decided by you.

Royalties are paid quarterly and include all royalties accrued during that period. Remember that, since Trafford is producing books one-at-a-time to fill incoming orders from customers, you, the author, don't have to pay for book manufacturing after investing in the initial on-demand publishing package -- you simply receive royalties on every copy sold, every three months.

Unlike the above, because of their arrangements allowing booksellers to return unsold copies, major trade publishers pay royalties much less frequently.

Authors can look up their books' on-going sales and royalty information on a confidential web page. As well, this information is included with the quarterly statements that are sent by mail.

Royalties to authors residing outside Canada will be paid in United States dollars. Authors may elect to have their royalties credited directly into their Visa, Mastercard or Amex account.

Find everything you want to know about royalties at: http://www.trafford.com/4dcgi/royalties.html? 15020054-20905aaa

For more information about Trafford On-Demand Publishing Services contact:
webmaster@trafford.com or Trafford's
publisher, Bruce Batchelor at
bbatchelor@trafford.com
TOLL-FREE (US and Canada) 1-888-232-4444 or 250-383-6864,
FAX 250-383-6804

http://www.trafford.com