Established in 1985 to provide services to the publishing industry, we have over 20 years experience in: manuscript development, editing, typesetting, design, layout, graphics, illustrations, scanning, printing, binding, marketing and distribution.
We offer quality, efficiency and good value.
Your inquiries are welcomed.
Letter from a customer: - "I just wanted to write a Thank-you for all your efforts in doing Dad's book. It looks terrific, and I'm so happy for him that it's finally more than a manuscript...and he can see the fruit of the past 20 years finally in print on his bookshelf (look foward to one on mine eventually.) Well it seems Mum has jumped on board now so I'll just bow out gracefully....and hope for lots of sales; thanks again and have a very Merry Christmas.
yours sincerely, Lizz"
Guidelines for Self-Publishers
Self-publishing is generally an option that authors pursue when their book is unlikely to sell in sufficient quantities through the booktrade to be a viable proposition for a commercial publisher, but is for themselves when they don't have the large operating overheads that commercial publishers have to recover.
As specialist retailers we regularly see books that have been self-published which have good content for those they have been written for, but are let down by their appearance and feel. In fact, the tactile quality of a book is what makes it a marketable product in today's electronic age.
While good design - both of the cover and the internal pages - is not a sufficient pre-requisite for trade sales success, it is a necessary one.
The choice of paper and binding is also important. Too often we see books where these choices have obviously been made on the basis of what is cheapest, but that isn't always the best way to go. People are more likely to be disposed to buying a book that both looks and feels good. For example, poorer quality paper will result in poorer quality reproduction of illustrations, and in today's highly visual age illustrations must be as well reproduced as they can be. Similarly people will feel more disposed to buying a book that doesn't look like it is going to fall to bits in a short period of time.
Another area where self-published books let themselves down is in text preparation: a spell-check on a word-processing program is not enough to knock a text into shape! Although you probably think your text is brilliant and no-one could possibly improve on it, in fact the input of a professional editor on matters such as structure, logic, insufficiency, redundancy, clarity and expression is invariably beneficial, often essentially so.
We recommend that you consult us early in your project to enable us to guide you on the options that will affect production matters later on; this can save you a lot of time, frustration and cost.
b. Risk publishing
We publish 1 or 2 trade titles a year for our own list and are interested in adult non-fiction works of a technical-historical, practical and reference nature.
Send us a synopsis of your manuscript in the first instance, along with details of illustrations that you have to accompany it and answers to these questions:
1. What is your book about?
2. What are your qualifications for writing it?
3. Who is your book written for?
4. Why would these people want to buy a book on this subject
-a: in general
and
-b: your one in particular?
5. To what extent can people find the information in your book
-a: in magazines, articles and books held in public libraries,
and
-b: on the Internet?
6. How can the people your book has been written for be informed of its existence, other than through extensive and expensive advertising campaigns? Unless you are already famous don't expect expect bookstores to prominently display it. There is a lot of competition for shelf space, and most of it is given to books by and about personalities, scandals and the old favourites of sport, gardening and cooking.
Vanity Publishers
There are firms (including some New Zealand ones) who advertise for authors and offer to publish your book - provided you pay them. We strongly recommend you ignore these "vanity publishers" as they are known. The books are often poor quality productions and these people have little or no interest in promoting and selling them. In any event the media and booktrade usually ignore their imprints.
Self publishing is not vanity publishing.
