Oxford eBooks

The Basics

There are many people that still like to pick up and hold a printed book.

Our print on demand service makes it possible for you to publish a professional looking paperback or hardback edition and distribute to the mainstream book sellers for a fraction of the price and with very little risk.

We can typeset, print, publish and distribute your book in printed form thanks to the rise of affordable Print on Demand factories that only print as many copies of your book as are ordered. No need to spend THOUSANDS on crates of boxes that sit in a warehouse or clutter up your loft.

We use print factories around the world, so your customers only ever pay local shipping fees. And if you want a box or two of your books to sell yourself, then that’s no problem at all we can order them for you to arrive directly to your door… or just about anywhere else in the world.

What you get

We’ll professionally typeset your book, and if you like, make it available on Amazon worldwide as well as register your ISBN for general distribution to all bookstores across the UK through our partner distributors.

You will receive one printed proof of your book for approval before it goes on sale.

Click the tabs to find out more…

We can also show you how to get set up with an account so that you can order your own stock, monitor sales and be paid directly into your own bank account when your book is on sale in the shops.

Designing your book

When we design your book for you there are some options for you to choose from.

Trim size

We can make your book in a variety of sizes. 5×8″ and 6×9″ are popular sizes for a novel and keeps your printing costs reasonable, but we can print up to 8.5×11″ if you like.

With paperbacks, we make them perfect bound (that’s where the spine is glued). Ask about other cover types, sizes and bindings if you need them.

Cover

You can have a gloss or matte finish to your cover in full colour.

Hardback

If you want a hardback then we can do that too – but do bear in mind that the cost of printing goes up quite a lot and so your earnings will reduce. This is nice though if you want to make something that really looks spectacular to show off or for a promotion.

Paper

There are a some paper options, but the main decision to make is white or crème. White is good if you have colour images in your book, crème is easy on the eye for novels.

Print

For a standard novel, you’ll want to choose the black and white option, but we also print in full colour if you have photographs and graphics to show off.

Costs

Below are some example costs for creating a print on demand book, publishing it and shipping a box of books to your door when everything’s done.

All projects are different, so this example is based on a typical novel that we have done before: It’s 350 pages long, 5″x8″ paperback, black and white on crème paper.

The typesetting portion will change if your book or cover is more complex.

Typesetting and Book Design (eg: 350 pages)	£420
Cover Layout (based on high quality stock image or supplied illustration)	£210
Submission of files to print factory and print proof	£120
	£750

All prices include UK VAT at 20%.

Extras

• Hardback or larger sized book, premium colour, large page count will cost a little more for the print proof.
• Duplex cover. Covers are printed single sided, but there is a double-sided print option for covers that the print plant offer. This costs more in design work and printing of the proof.
• Indexing. If your book requires an index, it will take extra time to set this up. (Table of contents are included if they’re not huge)
• ISBN £12 (see notes on ISBNs)
• Submission of revision. £120 If you want to make a change to your book after the first print proof is made then we need to charge for the submission and subsequent proof printing and shipping. We might charge a small amount for edits beyond the odd typo or extra paragraph.

How does it work?

A commonly asked question, but remember that with Oxford eBooks we deal with all the technical aspects. You only need to worry about writing your book.

We’ll take care of the whole process of getting your book from your manuscript to the stores. Here’s how it typically goes…

Manuscript

You supply us the final, proof-read manuscript and let us know what your book size, paper, cover type etc you’d like. We’ll talk you through the options if you’re a little uncertain.

Book Design

We’ll then make you a sample PDF of part of your book so that you can approve the layout and general design.

Typesetting

Once you’re happy with the layout, we can go ahead and typeset the remainder of the book.

PDF proof

We’ll email you a PDF proof of the completed internals of your book to check. Take your time to make sure this is right.

Pricing your book

When we know how many pages your book will be, we can calculate precisely how much your book will cost to print. We can talk about pricing your book for sale too. Take a look at our guide on print prices for more information.

Cover Layout

While you’re reading through your book, we’ll make the cover.

Although we can work on the general design of the cover from the beginning, the work to lay out the final cover comes towards the end so that we can create the spine of the book to precisely account for the number of pages in your book and the paper type. This bit is critical to get right so that your cover will wrap nicely around the book.

You’ll get a PDF proof of this to look at.

Printed proof

When and only when you’re happy with everything we’ll send the files to the printers to create the printed proof. This will take about a week and the proof will be sent directly to you.

Take a good look through it to be finally sure it’s right. Note that the previous PDF proofing was the opportunity to check for typos and edits, we’d need to charge to prepare a new print copy if you want changes at this point.

Ready to Print

Let us know that you’re happy with your book and we’ll make it available for people to buy. If you want to buy copies of your book, you can order them at any time in any quantity at cost plus 15% for admin.

Oh heck!

Someone spotted a typo in the book or a glaring plot hole! Not to worry, we can cycle back, fix it and upload the corrected edition. Because it’s print on demand, there are no boxes of books to pulp. All good… Nobody will notice!

Go out and sell your lovely book!

If you choose, we can list your book so that bookstores across the world can order it (please note, that it is entirely up to the book stores as to whether they want to stock your book – it WILL however always appear for sale in Amazon worldwide). The fun now begins for you to let the world know about your book.

How is my book sold?

When we publish your printed book for you, the bottom line is that you do not have to do ANY work at all to handle sales, customers, orders, shipping, returns etc. This is all handled by our print plant, the distributors and the retailers.

If we’re publishing on your behalf, all that happens is that every month if your book is selling, we send you money for the sales of your book direct to your bank account. If you have set up your own account with the print plant then they pay you directly each month.

It’s THAT simple!

Tell me more

When we release your book for sale, the information about the book is transmitted to the same central database that all good book sellers and distributors use to buy and sell books. This also includes Amazon.

Let’s take the case of sales on Amazon

It can take a couple of weeks for Amazon to process information about new books and put it up on their website. But as soon as that happens, it will appear with the cover, the blurb and if you also have an eBook, these will eventually appear on the same page for the customer to choose from. Sometimes it takes a couple of days for the cover image to appear.

At first, you might see that they show the book as “unavailable / out of stock” – that’s because nobody has ordered it yet. The book CAN still be bought. Amazon can’t order copies of EVERY book published, so they often wait until someone makes the first move. If you’re smart, you could order your review copies to send out to readers from Amazon to kick things off! (And you will still get paid for the books you buy from Amazon!)

Once someone buys a copy of your book, it’s printed freshly and sent out directly to the customer. Amazon handle all the shipping and customer relations. The sale is registered on the publishing account at the print plant and then each month (60 days in arrears) payment is sent out. See the section on MONEY in the handy guides to understand how much you get.

When a book begins to get popular, Amazon will then hold stock so that they can ship it faster. It seems that you DONT necessarily get paid for stock copies of your book until they’re sold. They seem to have a special relationship with the print plant (sale or return?)

Even though you may have set the recommended retail price (RRP) of your book, it’s ENTIRELY up to any book seller as to how much they sell it for. They might sell it for more, or they might discount it. You CANNOT control this, but you WILL ALWAYS get paid the same amount for your book whatever price it’s eventually sold for.

There are third-party book sellers on Amazon that sell used or new books and they might list your book for some ridiculous price – don’t worry about those.

Other book stores

Depending on the trade discount that you decide to set for your book, other book stores may list your book. Online stores are more likely to sell your book than brick and mortar high street stores due to the differing costs of retail. Again, look at the section on money for an explanation of trade discounts.

Have a google around to see where your book pops up – you might be surprised.