The cost to the author of being published by The Authors Library Press is £950.*

That includes typesetting, cover design, ISBN (of course), and distribution, plus an ebook (available on Amazon and other ebook sales points).

Distribution means listing on all the major platforms, W.H. Smiths, Waterstones, Amazon etc., so that your book is generally available.

It does not include printing;  that depends on the length of book and number of copies you decide to print, but it is usually (very roughly) £4 per copy.

For more detailed printing costs, see below.

Many publishers are quite cagey about this and don't mention it on their websites, but the price they give you for publishing never includes actual printing. For example they say the author recieves "the first printed copy" by which they mean it is P.O.D, print on demand, and the price includes literally one printed copy. Either that or they dont mention it at all on their website, or it is buried away.

Submissions should be made to  info@authorslibrarypress.com please headline your email "Submission". You are also welcome to phone if you want to discuss your submission. Please phone in that case 01304 449 413. between 1.30 pm - 7.30pm. We publish all genres.

*This is for a book of 80,000 words.For longer books please add £4 for every extra 1000 words. If your book is poetry then we may have to charge more because of the specific demands of typesetting. the inclusion of illustrations is charged at £3.00 each.

What we are is something more like an old-style traditional publisher, where aside from the fact that the author has paid some of the cost of producing the book, the experience for the author is more like being published by a publisher, like it used to be.

Authors make their submissions to us and we decide if we want to publish it or not, based on the quality of the writing.

The book will indeed be properly published, and look properly published, not self-published. It will  have the look of an Authors Library Press book.

The Authors Library Press was set up by a professional author with experience in publishing from both sides, as an author published by top publishers in Britain and abroad, as well as, on the other side, working for important publishers in Britain, as a consultant and editor.

Why use author contribution publishing,  why does it exist, who uses it?

As so-called traditional publishers are so commericially minded that they can no longer be relied upon to publish even their existing  authors' work, and because literary agents are the gatekeepers for this system, the best and most serious work is sometimes unable to find its way through the narrowly commercial preferences of agents and publishers.

Even for known and professional writers, publishing your work yourself, through author contribution publishers, is sometimes the only way to publish your best work.

Why do author contribution publishers charge for publishing a book?

Because there are far fewer small bookshops, and because the large bookshops ruthlessly limit their stock to commerical, top selling titles, and because internet sales do not compensate for that, publishers who want to publish more interesting work cannot rely on sales to cover their costs. They can though, through charging the authors, maintain an interesting and varied list that rivals anything tradtional publishers used to achieve before they became exclusively commercial.

Is it vanity publishing?

No, no more than running a small busines is being unemployed. The economy has changed and publishing has changed.

Royalties.

Because you are paying, you get 100% of all the proceeds from the sale of your book until you have earnt £30,000 from your book, this would normally be around the first 5000 books sold. After that we get a 15% royalty.

You own the copyright and can republish at any time.

Distribution (see also below)

We organise disribution through the largest wholesaler, Gardners.

Your book will of course be listed on Amazon.

So, if you do literally nothing else to promote or distribute your book, it will be available for sale online through us.

How long does it take?-

Under five weeks.

We have a very fast turnover time. This is because it is all in-house, except the printing.

It depends somewhat on the condition of the manuscript you give us, but generally we aim to have the book delivered to your door within five weeks.

How does that break down?

You send your book to us, already proof-read and ready for typesetting. We typeset it within a week and send it to you to check. If there are a few minor corrections we do those and send it back to you again for final approval. During this time we have designed the cover, which we send to you for approval and then that's it, we send it to the printers. They take 14 days to deliver it to you or to the distributors (if you print more than the 100 copies the distributor requires, then the remainder are delivered to you.)

Possible delays to this process are; if your script isn't properly ready for typesetting and requires corrections and adjustments. You are strongly recommended to ensure that it is ready.

You can of course submit it to us before proofreading it.

Please note, corrections to your text should not be made after typesetting. The time for that is before typesetting and we will ask you to check to make sure your manusctipt is the last and final version, requiring no corrections, before we typeset it. Corrections after typesetting will be charged for at £25 per hour.

Printing costs

Naturally  we can't give one standard price as it depends on the number of copies and the number of pages, and on whether there are colour pictures inside.

So here are some example printing prices so you can have them in mind. The cost per book gets somewhat cheaper as you print more copies.

30 copies, 256 pages, £125

50 copies 256 pages  £192

30 copies 352 pages  £162

50 copies 352 pages  £251

100 copies 250 pages £363

100 copies 352 pages £450

As a rough guide, a book of 80,000 words will make 250 pages in a standard A5 book. Don't worry there are no sudden jumps in price with how many words you have, it's incremental.

Distribution-

This is handled through Gardners, the largest UK book distributor.

How does it work?

 We register the book with Neilsen, the ISBN people, through whom people are able to order your book. The distribution company, Gardners, makes the book  available to the main bookshops and outlets, Waterstones, Blackwells, W.H. Smiths, etc. and with those the book is listed online. Gardners fulfil the orders.

Gardners pay you roughly 60% of the cover price.

You get 100% of the proceeds from that sale, until you have made £15,000. After that we get 15%

Your book will of course be listed on Amazon.

Help and advice is free.

General help and advice for writers is free. OR to  discuss our service, please phone  01304 449 413, or drop us an email at gregorymotton@yahoo.co.uk