FAQ

If your book has an ISBN, it will automatically be listed on Amazon (and most other online retailers). This doesn't mean it's stocked in Amazon's warehouse. In order for your book to be stocked with Amazon (and available for immediate despatch to customers) your publisher needs to arrange for stock to be held. This is usually done through the Amazon Advantage system. SilverWood Books has an Amazon Advantage account, so after discussion of the advantages and disadvantages with you, we can apply to have your book stocked in Amazon's warehouse, available immediately.

As one of the UK's leading online retailers, Amazon are very efficient at managing stock and delivering orders, but they do demand a fixed standard discount of 60%. This means net receipts (and therefore your royalties) are significantly reduced. However, the high volume of traffic through their website on a daily basis may raise the profile of your book. A discounted sale through Amazon is still a sale that may not have been made through other routes.

Selling a book you've published yourself requires hard work and dedication. Book retail is a crowded marketplace and competition to get noticed can be extremely fierce. Some authors and titles have a natural advantage - local interest books usually sell well, as do those with a carefully identified niche market. Fiction is probably the hardest sell and if you've written a novel you'll need to be realistic about your chances of bestseller status (but if it's well-written and professionally edited, with a strong local or regional element, you could be onto a winner if you're prepared to work steadily and build your audience in your home town).

If you'd like to know how we can help you with book promotion please see the overview in the Marketing and Promotion section of our Silver Service Menu or Contact Us for more detailed information.

Empowered Publishing is an exciting concept where the writer works in partnership with the publisher to produce their book.

Our aim is to empower you as an author and give you the tools to successfully produce a high quality book which you can confidently market online or in bookshops... in fact, anywhere that books are sold. Some bookshops are reluctant to stock self published books because while the writing may be good the books themselves are let down by poor copy-editing, unprofessional page layout and amateurish jacket design. Book shop owners and their customers will expect your book to look like a 'real' book, so it's vital that what you're offering them matches the high production values of mainstream publishing houses. And that's where Empowered Publishing can help you, because all our books are individually designed and finished to the highest industry standards. We don't use templates or off-the-peg designs. Each book is a bespoke product, designed within the context of its intended market.

Empowered Publishing offers the same kind of author-publisher relationship that you might expect from a high-profile mainstream publisher – a friendly professional team will take you through the publishing process from submission to book delivery, with aftercare that includes sales fulfilment, stock storage and maintenance, invoicing, accounting and regular royalty payments.

This leaves you with the freedom to get on with what you enjoy – writing your book!

So-called 'vanity' publishers are likely to assure you that your writing is wonderful, even if it isn't, just to get you to sign up to an often expensive publishing deal. Vanity publishers have little or no interest in selling the books they've produced, because they've already made their money by charging you many thousands of pounds for production.

Writers are becoming increasingly aware of vanity publishing and many choose to sidestep its pitfalls by self publishing. Self publishing is a fast-growing phenomenon whereby a writer decides to get their book out into the marketplace by doing everything themselves. And that really does mean everything. To truly 'self publish' a writer must set up their own publishing company, buy a number of ISBNs and begin to produce their own books - becoming editor, typesetter, proofreader, book jacket designer, project manager, publishing administrator, printer, promoter, bookseller and customer service representative. Some writers juggle these roles successfully, especially if they have a flair for design and/or marketing. However, many of the criticisms leveled at self published books (that they're poorly edited, badly designed and amateurish) may be because it takes training and experience to become good at just one of these roles. Attempting to attain professional levels in all of them just isn't practical. Besides, most writers just want to write - which is where Empowered Publishing comes in.

Empowered Publishing isn't true self publishing (although we do help a number of self publishers) and it isn't vanity publishing either. It's more akin to what you can expect from a mainstream publisher - a small professional team will take you through the publishing process from submission to book delivery, with aftercare that includes sales fulfilment, stock storage and maintenance, invoicing, accounting and regular royalty payments.

Empowered Publishing offers you the freedom to get on with what you enjoy - writing.

We charge a fair price for professional publishing services, and we only tell you that your writing is wonderful if it really is. If it isn't, we'll let you know as sensitively and constructively as we can and encourage you to join a writing group, find an editorial mentor, or work with us to improve your manuscript. This is because our business model works by selling books; there's no mileage for us in producing books that aren't any good because they're unlikely to find a market.

We aim to produce high quality books that writers can be proud of and readers can enjoy - beautiful books to give, to read, to treasure - and we're building a reputation for doing just that. Many of our authors come back to us to publish other books, which is the sort of endorsement that makes us excited, grateful, and proud.

We certainly think so. Our research shows that a conservative estimate of costs to professionally edit, proofread, design, typeset and project manage an average 70,000 word novel up to the point of printing is around £6000. After that, a budget will need to be set for printing, binding, warehousing and distributing the books, followed by launch costs, advertising and marketing.

With our Bronze pre-press package and black & white print on demand set-up for a paperback book (full colour cover, black text on white/cream paper) your investment can be as low as £500 - and if you select print on demand (POD) that includes a complimentary copy of your book.

We don't use templates or off-the-peg jacket designs - every page is individually formatted, and your book jacket is designed especially for your work. Our optional Silver Service Menu allows you to select additional or enhanced services if you'd like them

We strive to give the very best service we can at all times. Good communication at each stage of the publishing process is the key, and we hope that our collaborative approach builds a good relationship with our clients - so that if something's not quite right, you'll tell us immediately and we can correct it before we go to the next stage of the process.

We are always keen to improve our services wherever possible, so we'll also send you an Author Feedback questionnaire a short time after delivery of your books. Your opinion is very important to us and helps us evaluate the work we do.

An ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, which assist booksellers with processing and ordering. Each unique ISBN identifies a particular publisher, and is assigned only to that publisher.

Our pre-press packages include the use of an ISBN. SilverWood Books assigning your book an ISBN doesn't affect your copyright as an author (all our authors retain the copyright to their own work).

For further information about ISBNs in the UK, contact the UK ISBN Agency:

Nielsen Bookdata
3rd Floor, Midas House
62 Goldsworth Road
Woking
GU21 6LQ
Web: www.nbdrs.com

For countries outside the UK, contact the International ISBN Agency.

Not necessarily. An ISBN isn't a legal requirement. It's a product number which doesn't affect an author's copyright, or the ability to retain control over all aspects of their work (from design and page-layout to printing and marketing).

However, although an ISBN might not be a legal requirement, it is a desirable commodity. Having an ISBN means customers can order your book from most book retailers. Information about your title and a cover image is listed by Nielsen Bookdata and made available to booksellers in 100 countries worldwide. When you see your book listed with online retailers like Amazon, Waterstones or Borders, it's because they've subscribed to Nielsen Bookdata and use Nielsen's data to 'stock' their online bookstore.

• Online retailers (including silverwoodbooks.co.uk) and other major bookselling chains require an ISBN for internal processing, stock control and ordering.
• An ISBN can also be a helpful marketing tool that may help sales - bibliographic databases derive information from ISBN lists, passing on that information to libraries and booksellers around the world.

In your first print run, you should allow for 6 copies which we will send to the Legal Deposit Libraries on your behalf, according to the Legal Deposit Libraries Act of 2003.

These libraries are the British Library, Oxford Bodleian Library, Cambridge University Library, the National Library of Scotland, Trinity College Dublin, and the National Library of Wales.

Publications deposited with the British Library are made available to users in its various Reading Rooms. They are preserved for the benefit of future generations and become part of the nation's heritage.

Within one month of publication, there is a legal obligation to send one copy of each new publication to the Legal Deposit Office of the British Library:

Legal Deposit Office
The British Library
Boston Spa
Wetherby
West Yorkshire
LS23 7BY

In addition, the deposit regulations of the Copyrights Acts 1911 and 1963 require a further five copies to be sent to the Legal Deposit Agency for dissemination to the five copyright libraries of the UK:

Agency for the Legal Deposit Libraries
161 Causewayside
Edinburgh
EH9 1PH
Web: www.legaldeposit.org.uk

British Library's CIP programme provides records about new and forthcoming books to the library book buying market in the UK. Libraries are then alerted to titles of interest to their users, and may make their purchasing decisions based on the information. The CIP programme is offered free of charge to participating publishers by Bibliographic Data Services Ltd (BDS). BDS create a CIP record for each title, including details such as author, title and publisher, projected date of publication, pagination, ISBN and price.

Self-publishers wishing to join the CIP programme can find out more by contacting BDS:

Bibliographic Data Services Ltd
Publisher Liaison Department
Annandale House
The Crichton
Bankend Road
Dumfries
DG1 4TA
web: bibliographicdata.com
email: info@bibdsl.co.uk

Page layout formatting and/or typesetting your manuscript can take many hours of close work. Changes made to the text at a late stage can affect pagination (the arrangement and number of pages in a book). Sometimes even a relatively small change can mean that entire page layouts require re-formatting.

If you ask us to make a change, we'll need to key in new data, check it carefully, and re-proofread a section of your book. Because of the number of authors we work with, we have to place certain controls on the amount of work we're able to undertake free of charge.

Due to the time and care needed to make changes, we will make a charge for the time taken to make any amendments that you choose to make after the print proof stage (although you will always be given the option to decline amendments and their charges).

We strongly encourage all our authors to submit final text so that only small changes are necessary at the print proof stage

Yes, we do. We recognise that our operations have an environmental impact and that it is our responsibility to minimise this and to operate in an environmentally responsible manner.

From the implementation of our policy (April 2009), we aim to:

• Reduce paper use in office by only printing out documents we really need and otherwise using electronic documents.
• Reuse packaging as far as possible, recycling any unsuitable for re-use.
• Recycle all office paper, including shredded paper.
• Recycle all plastic bottles, cans, glass, cardboard, ink cartridges, batteries and aerosols.
• Use only FSC-certified paper products, both for office stationery and for print projects. Where appropriate and possible, opt for recycled paper products.
• Choose ecologically-sound cleaning products and toilet tissue whenever possible.
• Make publicly available this policy document to inform our customers of our commitment to reducing our environmental impact.

Our full policy is available by email upon request.