This week James writes:

Hello,

Hi James,

Congrats on getting your 'baby' to the point where it's ready to meet the world.

On looking at the Trafford services, it looks like you'd have to get the top tier of service ($990) to get a service where you don't have to order the books and handle order-taking and fulfillment from your home. With their top tier service they would handle this stuff but with both of the other services you would have to become your own distribution center. This may not be a problem for you (especially if you want to keep a close eye on where every order comes from) but may result in delays for your readers, a lot of admin and trips to the Post Office for you, and reluctance on the part of chain bookstores to order the books.

Since there are other companies that offer POD AND order-processing and fulfillment, at a lower price (Xlibris is one of them) I would be tempted to bypass Trafford - unless they offer something you can't get with another service. Not sure what that would be, but I'm not sure what your specific needs are.

When you talk to them (and I would recommend calling and talking to all the companies you consider) make sure to ask Trafford where they ship books from. If they ship from their offices in Canada and you are in the US, you're going to have to pay some hefty shipping and perhaps customs charges.

I don't know how Trafford is currently doing, but they have been around for a long time (doing standard subsidy printing before POD became possible) and seem financially stable.

I know more about Xlibris (since I used to work there and still have friends there). They are doing well and seem to have a good system of author-support. If you are at all interested in hardback books I'd have to recommend Xlibris. The quality of their hardbacks is astonishingly good. Xlibris handles all the interior design in professional design programs (not in a word- processing program like many smaller companies), which make your book look 'real' to the trained eye, and easy to read to the untrained eye. They have recently introduced full color picture books, too.

Another company that seem to be doing a very good job - and which offers fulfillment - is 1stBooks.com. 1stBooks has been around since about 1997 as an electronic publisher, and has been doing POD for a couple of years. Like Xlibris their paperbacks and distribution are handled by Lightning Source (a division of the Ingram distribution group - the largest distributor of trade books in the US). This means the books get into the bookstore channels relatively easily. I think the 1stBooks prices and service are comparable to Xlibris and they offer more formats of paperback - so if an 8.5 x 11 paperback is really key to your book, you might want to go with 1stBooks.

When thinking about cost, do consider the cost to the author of books. In addition to your initial costs, you are likely to buy at least 100 copies yourself, at some point. Factor in this cost when comparing prices.

I do not recommend iUniverse. Although they are big, well-funded and experienced, they take rights and I don't believe they do enough for you to earn the rights. They do no more for you than services like Xlibris or 1stBooks and yet they want to hold your rights for 3 years. If your book takes off and you are approached by a big publisher, iUniverse gets a cut of your advance. And it's not like they go out and shop your book to big publishers. So I don't recommend them. If you're going to give up rights, find a reputable small press.

If I was publishing POD today, I would stick with either Xlibris or 1stBooks. They are big enough to have some clout in the book selling industry; they've been in business long enough to have ironed out the many wrinkles that come with the territory; and are both professional organizations, not run from someone's spare bedroom. (It is very easy to get set up as a 'publisher' or publishing service today, especially when a printing and distribution center like Lightning Source exists, meaning the new 'companies' need invest virtually no capital. This is why I see new POD companies springing up every day. If you're going to have a middle man, though, you want it to be someone who knows what they are doing and who can really earn their cut of the book sales profits.)

One final note. Having dealt with authors every day for three years, I know that any author who sends off their baby to be 'dressed' by someone else, is going to need a little hand-holding. I would recommend calling and talking to the companies you are considering and getting a feel for how you might be treated when you go through the process. Now, both Xlibris and 1stBooks have sales teams who are distinct from the people who will actually handle you after you sign up, but you can still get a feel for the company ethic by talking to them. It is important to get someone who feels sympathetic to your needs but it is also quite important to get someone who will set rules and limits for you. They SHOULD know more about this than you. It is very easy for an author to go on tweaking and correcting their book forever. You need someone who is going to tell you that no, you don't have to buy that last round of corrections, that you should just let it go. I'm not sure if you can get a feel for this on a sales call, but keep an ear open for well-defined services and limits on those services: how many times do you get to ask for changes, how extensive can those changes be, etc.

Hope this helps. Please do let me know how you get on.

Best wishes, 

Julie

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