Abiding Books Publishing

Working together to produce books that abide...

What Makes Abiding Books Different?

To understand what we have to offer, you need to know a little bit about the options available to you. Here they are. There are basically two ways you can turn your manuscript into a book. You can try to sell it to a royalty publisher, either by yourself or with the help of an agent, or you can pay to publish it yourself.
Royalty publishing houses

In the traditional publishing process, you submit a book proposal or your completed manuscript to a literary agent or a publisher's acquisition editor in the hope that it will be selected for publication. If it is (and the chances are 99 to1 that it won't be), the publisher will usually pay you an advance against future royalties and negotiate a contract that transfers the publication rights from you to them. Once you turn your manuscript over, you lose control over it, and it could be up to two years before it gets into bookstores.

Once it is released, you begin to earn royalties on the copies that sell. This usually amounts to about 15% of the publisher's net sale. In order to get it into bookstores, they will discount it by at least 50%, which means that if your book retails for $10.00, you'll get about 75 cents for every book that sells. If your book sells like the average one in the United States does (5,000 copies), you'll make about $3750, which probably won't be enough to cover your advance.

But let's say you don't care nearly as much about about earning a lot of money as you do about seeing that your message gets out. The hard truth is that most publishers will push your book for a four-month selling season only. And they can let it go out-of-print whenever they want.

Self-publishing

Self-publishers make more money on their effort, get to press sooner, and keep control of their work. There are several ways to self-publish, with more becoming available all the time.

Vanity presses

It used to be that the only alternatives to traditional publishers were the copying machine or a vanity press. Vanity presses (also called subsidy presses) are the ones everyone warns you about. They almost always accept a manuscript for publication, give you no editorial input, and don't make any promises about sales. They don't have to sell any books because they make their money by selling you lots of copies of your own book. They are not concerned with promotion, sales, or distribution. Usually books published by vanity presses can't even get reviewed, because reviewers know they haven't been edited. They also know that even if the book is good, without an effort to promote it, potential buyers won't be able to find it in stores.

POD publishing

Advances in electronic publishing have led to a new kind of self-publishing that is a vast improvement over vanity publishing. It is called print on demand, or POD.
Many of these publishers promise you a quality book, but they rarely deliver on that promise. They offer you limited editing services at best and a limited selection of canned cover options. If you really want a custom design, you will pay up to $500 extra for it. The book's typography is often of mediocre quality, and the interior template is squeezed to save money. Although some POD publishers provide better quality than others, people who know what to look for can easily spot a POD book. They simply do not look as professional.
If you want a top-quality book, want more than 500 copies of it, or if you plan to sell it primarily through bookstores, POD is not the way to self-publish. Most bookstores require at least a 50% discount to stock a book. Given the cost structure of POD, it isn't possible to offer such a deep discount.

There are many publishers springing up that combine different aspects of royalty, vanity, and POD publishing. Some are reputable; some aren't. Before signing a contract with any of them, you need to thoroughly investigate any you are considering using.

Abiding Books

Abiding books offers a full range of publishing services to authors. Very few authors have the skills needed to do everything it takes to publish a quality book. That's where we come in. We provide you with the services you need. You decide which service you need. You can use one of them or all of them. If we accept your book and you use all our services, you can publish your book under the Abiding Books imprint. Whichever ones you use, you will work directly with an experienced freelancer with extensive experience in his or her field. The channels of communication are always open, and you retain control of your work. There are no long-term contracts or start-up fees, and you keep all rights.