[Steven Lake]

Originally Posted by dadioflex

Steven, when you say you own the artwork, are you SURE you own the artwork? If you wanted to use that cover with a different publisher (removing any references to the current publisher, obviously) would you be allowed to? If that was the case then it would be a real cheap way to get a quality cover. Maybe you could clarify that with your friend at 2 Moon for me.

Yes, you get to keep your cover and gain full ownership of it. Since you paid for it as part of your setup fee, it's yours to do with however you want.

Anyway, you never said who covers the cost of inventory or whether it is purely print on demand.

Nope, he covers the cost of all inventory. The only time you pay for any of your own books is if you're buying some to resell at shows, conventions, in person, stuff like that. Even the big houses do that. And orders are not POD. He's got the capabilities to print his own stuff in any quantity up to like 300 units or so, which works well when filling emergency orders. After that he just farms the work out to one of several big digital printing companies around here who can do anything from 50 to 500,000 copies, which is a load off his back and makes it easier on him if it's a large order.

Are the copies for the signings included in the package price or is that an extra?

Well, there's two types of signings. The first is the "paid" event. IE, you pay a store or location for the "privilege" of being allowed to come into "their" store and sign your books. Thankfully there aren't many of these, but they do tend to net you some nice returns. The second kind is the "free" signings, where you come in and do a signing at no cost to you. Some of the packages he has include "2 free signings". IE, you "paid" signings, since they cost him money to do. But you can have as many free ones as you like. And if you start selling enough copies of your book, he'll even toss more paid ones in for free. ^_^

I'm sceptical about vanity publishing, particularly when there are so many other options available for self-publishing, but I'd acknowledge there are good and bad vanity publishers. I'm glad you're happy with your choice.

Well, PTP, POD and Vanity publishers (PTP != Vanity) work well for the authors who either don't know the industry good enough to go it entirely on their own, or don't have the resources, and thus find it best to let someone else who knows the industry handle all the dirty work. And trust me when I say this, having done some web work for him, and having sat in his office as he's working, I've learned some incredible things about both the complexity, and general insanity of the publishing world. Anyone who does successfully go it alone, I applaud them. It's a lot of hard work and enough to make you pull your hair out. In fact, it's almost as though the entire industry is setup in such a way as to prevent people from succeeding unless they go with one of the big houses. But thanks to the internet, and PTP publishers like 2 Moon, plus places like this website, that wall is being torn down bigtime. ^_^

Have you made a profit over all?

Actually, yes I have. Quite a bit already actually. We're right now working to get enough sales to get me on a best seller list by the end of the year. (FYI, to get on *ANY* best seller list, you need at least 250,000 copies sold.)