Self Publishing FAQ

How long does it take?

We will send you a quotation within 48 hours, showing you the cost of creating the master’ artwork for your book, the cost of printing each book, and any recommendations we have about book size and design concepts. Once we get going, the creation of the book will take 10-20 working days. We are flexible to each author’s working methods so it’s good to discuss the overall project time at the outset and how you like to work. Once approved by you, the book will take between 5-10 days to appear on Amazon and other book retailers’ web sites, at which time it will also be available for small print runs for your own copies, and purchase by bookshops.

What about copyright?

You retain copyright. We don’t ask you to sign a contract. We do ask you to sign a letter attesting  that the book is your work and that it is doesn’t contain anything that breaks any laws.

What are the costs to the author?

The cost of designing and creating the master’ artwork for your book is the main cost. As a rough guide, a 150 page 6×9 inch book will cost £250-£300 when created from a standard wordprocessor file, including a few photos or illustrations. This design and setup fee pays for the entire publishing process that puts your book on sale worldwide. It includes interior and cover design, and proofing until you are happy with the internal pages and the cover. If you want us to edit your book before typesetting, ask for this separately and we’ll quote a fixed price based on the number of words in your manuscript. If you have a complex graphic design, get in touch to discuss and well provide a turnkey quote.

How do I make money from my book?

If you set your book price at £15.00, you are likely to earn about £5.00 per copy sold. Having paid e.g. £250 for the setup, you’ll therefore need to sell 50 copies to break even. After that, each £5.00 is profit. When selling via the book trade (Amazon, Waterstones etc.) Into Print deals with order fulfilment so that there is no financial outlay from you to fulfil these orders and and you can’t lose any money by publishing your book.

How do I get paid?

You invoice us on receipt of your sales income statement and we pay you via direct bank transfer to UK £ sterling accounts and via Transferwise (low cost currency exchange) to non-sterling accounts. You pay us for our services in the same way or by bank draft/cheque as appropriate. As each book is printed to fulfil a customer order, the fixed income from that sale is recorded on your sales statement – recording the month of sale and the territory where the sale was made (e.g. UK, USA, Australia or in the global network of partner factories).

Do you edit the manuscript?

We receive most of our author manuscripts as ‘final manuscript’ ready for us to typeset into book pages. If we notice that some editing is required, we will alert you. If you want us to edit your manuscript from scratch, send it to us for evaluation and we’ll explain how much work we think is involved and quote a fixed cost (we are very competitive) per 10,000 words.

Can you print in colour?

We can produce softback and hardback colour books suitable for children’s stories, graphic novels, text books, travel books with photography and artists’ catalogues. Just specify colour in your quotation request. Colour reproduction is excellent and we are happy to send you a sample.

Can I really print just one book at a time?

Our Just One Book (JOB) service means that an individual copy is printed and sent out to a purchaser in a bookshop (high street or internet). If you want copies to send out for review or to sell directly e.g. from a craft stall or from your own web site, it’s economical to think in terms of 10+ copies at a time to keep down the carriage charge. We’ll print your own copies in the factory nearest you geographically e.g. for New Zealand, that’s in Australia; for Spain, in the UK; for North America, in the USA etc.

What can I have on the cover?

We will advise on cover design but you are free to have anything you want to supply. We will advise on purchasing stock photos or illustratons. You should supply your own title, subtitle (if any), author name, and quotes from any reviews already received. You should supply a ‘blurb’ to sell the book, and possibly an author’s biography,  for the back cover. We put it all together, add an ISBN, barcode and spine, ready for printing.

How do I present my work to you?

Send us your wordprocessor file(s) and any notes on the layout of the book. If the intended layout is not represented in the wordprocessor file then you can instruct us or send a sample we can work to. Send us your pictures as digital files via email or DropBox/OneDrive/Google Drive etc or on USB stick. If you have hard copies, get them scanned to disk at your local copy shop or send them to us for scanning (for a modest extra charge) and safe return.

Do I format like a book?

You don’t need to try to make your document look like a book. We recommend preparing your book in a wordprocessor with automatic page numbers. Don’t add page numbers manually or try to format text manually – use the wordprocessor’s formatting capabilities or leave everything as simple text and tell us how you’d like it to look. When you have pictures, you can either include them in the wordprocessor document or you can simply mark in the document where they should appear. Number them in sequence and provide captions where required.

Should I send PDFs?

We work with text and images but there are some circumstances when you may have  created a sophisticated layout with tables and images in a word-processor or other software that will be difficult or expensive to recreate for print. We can take your PDFs in the size you’ve created your document and match them to a book format that we print. We offer free, no obligation, advice on the best ways to prepare and submit your work so feel free to get in touch with editor Mark Webb +44 (0)1604 832149.

Do you accept typed manuscripts?

Yes. We will scan and optically character read your manuscript, quoting a fixed fee for the work. We can return it to you for further editing/updating before we embark on typesetting the pages or you can instruct us to move straight to the next stage of your book publishing project.

How much does it cost to produce an e-book?

If you instruct us, we will publish e-book versions from the approved print edition of your book at a cost of £60+VAT. We send the e-book file and data about the book out to the e-book seller platforms so that they can sell it. When your e-book is purchased for download (access limited to one user by digital rights management) you receive payment just as with the printed copy. We publish Kindle versions for sale on Amazon, and EPUB versions for sale via Google PLAY Books, Kobo and Nook; with optional Apple Books. We incorporate a hyperlinked contents page, in-line illustrations and test the e-book to check that it flows properly on different e-readers, smartphones and tablets.

When is a good time to publish?

The book trade works around various key sales periods. We will advise on timing, how to contact your local bookshops for launches and signings, and how to publicise your new book. Christmas is always a key sales period and there’s nothing like giving your own book as a present.