MSI Press Blog

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  This week's conversation addresses a thorny and frustrating issue--the finances of book sales, especially books that, in general, sell well. (We are not talking about authors who take thousands from savings to plaster information about their books everywhere or buy their own copies to try to get onto a bestseller list. Rather, we are talking about the average author, who simply desires to get the word out and the sales in.) Nearly all authors intently want to see their book in every bookstore they walk into -- and every one they don't. They don't realize three important things that can destroy their life if they actually get thei

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  This week we look at the print on demand option for book printing. Authors generally think that understand POD (after all, it is a simple concept of just-in-time printing, right?), but they often do not. Authors may misinterpret/misunderstand POD in the nature, structure, and realizations of POD. Nature Print-on-Demand is an approach to publishing books as the demand (sales) for them are generated. Digital printing has allowed for the capacity to generate small numbers of books, even individual copies and has facilitated publishing/printing to join the growing numbers of businesses that rely on just-in-time inventory, saving the massive

  It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would What at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic arises from a discussion last week with an author whose cost of book returns brought an otherwise successful book into the negative net income (i.e.) loss realm. Our conversation revolved around several questions that arose from her discussions with her local bookstore.  Why/how do returned books create loss for an otherwise successful book? A large number of returns can eradicate all profit from the book sale and put the book into the loss column on a P&L statement: print costs will not have been recoupled; additional books have now been returned to the publisher's inventory, books that wer

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic addresses the value of books that fit clear niches and platforms that are conduits to those niches. I am always a bit saddened and frustrated when authors of a pretty good book state in their proposal that no way is their book a niche book, that it will be of interest to everyone in the world, or millions of people, or every woman, etc., referring to a huge population base. Reaching a base that large, unless one has immense amounts of money (tens of thousands, if not more) to invest, is quite unrealistic -- and then there is the issue of creating your audience, i.e. interesting people who are not actively searching for your

It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's topic is a never-ending one: book marketing. The sales of the books of many first-time authors suffer low returns because their authors believe that marketing should be the province of someone else (the publisher, the distributor -- and yes, both do market books) and are reluctant to learn the business end of the book industry. For those who believe (or a least hope) that the writing of their book frees them up to write the next one, here are some reasons to develop some marketing skills: Books published through Amazon (yeah, free) sell about 250 copies over an author's lifetime on average; that average comes from 10% high-sell

  photo by Frank Perez It is Tuesday. Time to tall turkey. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side. Today's topic returns to an earlier topic -- book tours -- with more detail. Some interesting posts and articles and research have come out since the earlier posts, so there seemed to be a need for an update.  Book tours are often imagined by new authors as exciting places publishers will send them to meet hordes of fans-to-be at almost-sycophant book stores. While at one point in time and even today for very famous authors, publishers did and do this, it is rare, and certainly a new author is not going to get this kind of red-carpet treatment from a publisher.  Book tours generally do not make mo

  It is Tuesday. Monday's madness is over, and Wednesday will take us over the hump, so Tuesday it is--for some serious discussion with authors. Tuesday talks mean to address authors in waiting and self-published authors who would like to go a more traditional route or who would at least like to take their steps with a publisher by their side.  Today's post addresses the topic of royalties. I suppose that topic was conditioned by the fact that the first quarter of the year is when MSI Press calculates royalties for the past year and gets ready to pay them out to authors. Of course, royalty issues should have been sorted out before a contract was signed, but if one is still pending, and for the future, perhaps some of the information here will help. Kinds of Royalties Royalties can be calculated on list or net. Royalties calculated on list are pretty easy to figure. It is generally a percentage of the selling price of the book, regardless of costs encountered in producing and ma