1. Seven
Principles Press does not accept any and all
submissions.
Most subsidies or
vanities are looking to cash in on authors. They
have no concern for the quality of the work, or the
marketability of the work, or the effect a poorly
produced book may have on the company's image. They
are in the business for one reason and one reason
only - to make money off the prospective author. At
Seven Principles Press, we care about our authors.
Your books are our books. Your success, our success.
Your name is our name. With that in mind, we want to
provide the very best in our niche market. We want
readers to seek out our books, to create demand for
the next great Seven Principles Press book or
author. With that in mind, not every
manuscript submitted is accepted. We are specialized. Our focus is bringing
to our audience the very best in
progressive, radical works related to racism with
specific emphasis on the African Diasporia.
2. You will never
see template or horribly done covers.
Even though they say
never judge a book by its cover, most do, especially
if the cover screams amateur. Whether our authors
request for their covers to be done by our artists
or have it done on their own, a Seven Principles
Press book will never had an unattractive, generic,
template, or simply amateurish cover. Our covers will all
be professionally done. Here is an example of one of
our books,
3. Every book will
be professionally edited.
No publisher, not
even the big boys, can guarantee there will not be
any editing mistakes. It happens in this industry.
Every book will be professionally
edited.
4. Each book will
be typeset, proofed, and test printed before ever
seeing the light of day.
One of the big knocks
on Print-on-Demand publishing by subsidies or
vanities is that they are not properly typeset and
sometimes are missing pages, have pages completely
off centered, unjustified or are just a plain mess.
This will never happen with a Seven Principles Press
book.
5. We offer no
"add-ons" or "upsells".
Subsidies and
Vanities make their killing on add on's or upsells.
These are fees or charges for different pieces to
their main setup package. These include charges for
an LCCN or to allow Returns or to add books to Books
in Print. Folks, this stuff is FREE. It costs the
publisher nothing to provide these and other addons
that are outrageously priced. We've seen some
publishers charge the absurd number of $500 for
option to accept returns. They are using YOUR money
to protect themselves from their inability to market
and sell your books. Further, while making your book
returnable increases the chances that a bookstore
will stock it - IT DOES NOT GUARANTEE IT - meaning,
you could be giving up $500 bucks for NOTHING.
Our three partnership
packages are not upsells - they are structured for
your level of participation. If you are a go-getter
and want to do much of the legwork on your own - we
have a package for that. If you want us to do nearly
everything for you (with the exception of marketing
- any author needs to be willing to do the work to
market themselves and their work), we have a package
for that, too. We will never charge you for things
that cost us nothing. LCCN's cost us a couple copies
of your book. Miniscule. Books in Print is automatic
when we assign an ISBN number to your work. Its no
cost to us. And to put that little checkmark next to
returns costs us nothing, too. We assume the risk of
the returns because frankly, if the books are in a
brick-and-mortar store its because they believe it
will sell to their clientele and any publisher not
willing to risk returns is not only doing a
disservice to their authors but really shouldn't be
in the business.
6. No False
Promises.
Here's the ugly truth
- you're not going to get rich publishing with Seven
Principles Press. The sad truth is most books that
are Print-on-Demand sell only about 200 copies. This
is true with Seven Principles Press, IUniverse,
Booksurge, small publishers who use POD technology,
and even for some of your midsize traditional
publishers. While we offer competitive advantages
over the subsidies and vanities by offering the
standard trade discounts and returns, but this alone
is not enough to guarantee your book will be at your
local Barnes and Noble. It will take a lot
of work from you to get it there. Through our
relationship with our printer/distributor Lightning
Source and Ingram Wholesaler, your book will be
listed with every traditional book retail website
out there but there is absolutely no guarantee it
will ever be stocked in the brick-and-mortar chain
stores or even the smaller book selling
establishments.
We will try to
provide you all the tools possible to make it your
book a success (with no additional hidden charges
added in) - but in the end, the amount you sell will
be up to your dedication to the work. Seven
Principles Press does not charge you thousands of
dollars on the false pretense that you will somehow
make that much back or more.
While we painted a
bleak picture, there have been success stories in
the POD world.
Going POD could
potentially get you noticed and signed by a major
publisher (although, truthfully, this is not as
common as some would have you believe) and at the
very least will get your name out there as a
published author.
Making a successfully
run in the POD world requires dedication, a little
marketing know-how, the willingness to talk to
people (pound flesh, if you will), and let people
know you are out there. If you are ready for that
type of commitment, then its time you take the next
step. Join with us in a partnership and we can work
together to make a profitable, exciting, and
fulfilling venture.
If you are not, then
maybe you should continue to try and join up with a
major publisher or a literary agent. You may get
lucky and find an editor who simply loves your work,
throws a $10,000 marketing campaign behind it and
you'll be on your way. You never know.
If you're tired of
waiting, join us.
7. It's Your Work
and Our Experience that's the difference.
We need you to
understand that while its your work, its our name on
the spine of the book. We will be very protective of
that. We've seen what works in this industry and
what doesn't and we want to protect the integrity of
our name and the reputations of our authors. With
that said, we will work with you to create a book
that you are happy with but will also be marketable,
professionally done, and stand up to any other in
the marketplace.
If you want to
control every aspect of your books creation - Seven
Principles Press is not your place to do it. We
suggest that you use our friends at
Lulu.com - with them you can control every part
of your book's production - from cradle to grave.
Partnership FAQ
