DLD Books

Time 2021-11-15 20:04:35

Web Name: DLD Books

WebSite: http://www.dldbooks.com

ID:234108

Keywords:

DLD,Books,self-publishing,indiepublishing,Smashwords,KDP,Amazon,Kindle,printedit

Description:

keywords:self-publishing, indie publishing, Smashwords, KDP, Amazon, Kindle, print edition, ebook, e-book, David Dvorkin, Leonore Dvorkin, Leonore Hardy Dvorkin, Leonore Hardy, Leonore Marie Hardy, Leonore Marie Hardy Dvorkin, fiction, novels, non-fiction, biography, autobiography, memoir, language services, writing services, proofreading, editing, technical writing, proposal writing, grant writing
description:Editing and self-publishing services.

Tweet Contact

Email: info@dldbooks.com
Phone: 303-985-2327 or 303-885-3421

DLD BooksEditing and SelfPublishing Services

Co-owners David and Leonore Dvorkin
David: Website Email
Leonore: Website Email
David's book about self-publishing: Self-Publishing Tools, Tips, and TechniquesClient List

To see a list of our clients, please click here.

Our Services We proofread, edit, and format clients' books and prepare the books for publication. Please note that we are not publishers. The books are selfpublished under the clients' names. The client owns all rights to the book and receives all income (royalties) from the book. Our fee is $25/hr, $20/hr for clients who are disabled and/or low income.
Please note: Our fee for clients who are not disabled and/or low income will increase to $30/hr on January 1, 2022. The fee for disabled and/or low-income clients will remain $20/hr. Proofreading consists of making simple changes to correct grammar, spelling, punctuation, and formatting. Editing consists of making more extensive changes to the text, such as shortening it, moving parts around, etc., naturally with the author's approval. We format the finished book for publication in ebook and print versions. We create a cover for the book. To see the covers we have created, click here. We set up accounts for the clients on Smashwords (for ebooks) and Amazon KDP (for ebooks and print books) and then upload the formatted books to those sites. (Note: The clients can set up the accounts themeselves, if they prefer. However, we cannot complete a project unless we are able to log into the client's two accounts, so that we can upload the book and correct any errors ourselves. This includes us ordering a proof copy of the print edition, proofreading that, and then correcting any errors.) Optionally and at no charge, we can provide a bookrelated Web page for the client as part of our DLD Books website. The Web page will include the book cover, a synopsis, a feature that allows potential buyers to read a sample of the book, buying links, and any biographical and contact information the client wishes to provide. As of autumn 2018, we have edited and produced over 60 books, both fiction and nonfiction, for more than 40 clients. The majority of our clients are blind or visually impaired. We also edit shorter projects, such as articles, essays, stories, letters, and rsums. We reserve the right to decline a project based on our schedules and/or the nature of the project.Payment We do not require upfront payment. However, we do now have a payasyougo policy. We will ask you for a payment after ten hours of work on your book (i.e., when your bill for book editing reaches $300 or $200, depending on the hourly rate we are charging you). We will resume work on your project when payment is received. For shorter projects, such as letters, essays, articles, and rsums, for which the total bill is less than $300/$200, payment will be expected upon completion and delivery of the work. The minimum charge for a short project is $30 or $20, depending on the hourly rate we are charging you. We accept checks, money orders, or PayPal payments. To send money to David via PayPal, click on this link: paypal.me/DavidDvorkin To send money to Leonore via PayPal, click on this link: paypal.me/LeonoreDvorkinSample Contract

To see a sample of our editing contract, click here. This is a PDF file.

Additional Services from David Dvorkin

Some clients' books don't require editing. For example, many authors want to reissue (i.e., selfpublish) books that were previously published by traditional publishers. (Make sure you have the rights back for your book before you do this!) I format those books for publication as ebooks and print books and create covers for both formats. You can see the covers I've designed here. I set up accounts for the clients on Smashwords for ebooks and Amazon KDP for ebooks and print books and then upload the formatted books to those sites. My charge is $30/hour.

I also design covers for authors who need only that service. You can provide an image for the cover (e.g., a photograph to which you own the rights or a professionally produced graphic you have paid for) or you can have me find an appropriate image for you. Stock photos sometimes have prices set by the photographers. Naturally, the client is expected to pay the cost of any such desired image. Whenever possible, I use images that are in the public domain (in other words, free).

Contact David via email: david@dvorkin.com

Ordering Your Books from Amazon

You can order print copies of your book from Amazon at a special, low author's price. To see the instructions for doing this, click here.

Checking Your Sales Numbers

You can see how many copies of your book have been sold on Amazon and Smashwords. To see the instructions for doing this, click here.

Some Notes about SelfPublishing The money you make from your selfpublished book is taxable income. The money you spend in connection with selfpublishing e.g., postage, advertising, the fees you pay us is a taxdeductible expense. You take care of this by completing IRS Schedule C and filing it with your income tax return. Schedule C is specifically for profit or loss from a business you operate or a profession you practice as a sole proprietor. (All of this applies to the great majority of writers, but your situation may differ. I'm not a tax adviser, tax lawyer, or tax preparer.) Marketing is the author's responsibility. On Smashwords and Amazon (ebooks), the book's price is set by the author. Low is generally good, but the price must be at least 99 cents. Our own books are $3.99 each. For print books published on Amazon KDP, the author sets the price, but that price has to be above a minimum price. The minimum price is determined by the book's length, whether it's printed in black and white or color, and how many of the available distribution channels the author has selected. Once all of this information has been entered, KDP calculates the minimum price. When the book's retail price is entered, KDP shows how much the author will receive in royalties for each distribution channel. Royalties paid by Amazon and Smashwords for ebooks are excellent, generally between 70% and 85% of the cover price, far higher than the 615% typically paid by traditional publishers. Smashwords pays royalties monthly. Payment is by PayPal or printed check. Amazon pays monthly. Payment is by check or direct deposit to your bank account. Smashwords notifies the author by email when a book is sold on the Smashwords site. The ebook market and sales of ebook readers, such as the Kindle and the Nook, as well as tablet computers, are growing very rapidly. Readers of ebooks typically read more books per year than readers of printed books do. In May 2011, Amazon announced that they are now selling more ebooks on their site than printed books. Amazon is the most lucrative sales channel for ebooks. A study conducted in April 2012 found that 68% of ebook publishers sell through Amazon. Apple's iBookstore is second; 58% of ebook publishers use it. Actual numbers and percentages of ebooks sold through the various sites are harder to determine because Amazon, Apple, etc. don't make those number available, so all we have are estimates from various people. Current estimates are that 5060% of ebooks sold online are sold by Amazon and about 2025% are sold by Apple, with Kobo and Barnes e.g., a photograph or a drawing that will be the basis for a cover. If that's not the case, we will look for an appropriate publicdomain image to use for the cover.

EBooks

We use two sites to publish the ebook version of your book: KDP (which is part of Amazon) and Smashwords. We upload a specially formatted version of your book to KDP, and KDP then converts that to a Kindle ebook for sale on Amazon's websites in various countries (currently, the US, the UK, Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Japan, India, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, and Australia). Similarly, we upload a differently formatted file to Smashwords, and Smashwords converts it to a number of ebook formats, which they then distribute for sale on a number of sites, such as Apple's iBookstore and Barnes book, whereas Amazon assigns the book an ASIN, their version of an ISBN. Neither company charges for any of this. They make their profit by taking a small percentage of the sale price of each copy sold.

For all of this to be done, you need an account on Smashwords and one on Amazon. We can create these accounts for you. If you already have an Amazon account, we use that account.

With an ebook, the emphasis is on content, not formatting. That's because ereaders, such as the Nook and Kindle, allow the user to control the formatting e.g., font, font size, line spacing. In addition, Smashwords imposes its own limitations on how much formatting one can do. This isn't normally a problem for fiction, but it can be for nonfiction.

We have done ebooks containing photographs and drawings, but the way the images show up inside an ebook may not always be the way the author wanted. Another thing to bear in mind is that older Kindles (i.e., the ones that predate the new Kindle Fire) only display black and white, so color illustrations show up as shades of gray.

These formatting limitations don't apply to print editions.

Print Books

For print editions, we use Amazon's KDP subdivision. Usually, the book will be a paperback. In most cases, the dimensions will be 6 inches by 9 inches, although we can discuss other possible sizes for special cases, such as children's books. KDP also offers the option of publishing the book as a hardcover. This is not the traditional hardcover with a paper dustjacket (called a clothbound edition). Rather, the front cover, back cover, and spine are printed directly onto the hard covers. The cover price will be higher than for the paperback version, but the book itself is sturdier.

We create a formatted PDF file for the book's interior and another one for the cover and upload both of those to the KDP website. KDP assigns an ISBN to the book; there is no charge for this. KDP makes the book available for sale on Amazon's websites in various countries, the Barnes quality versions of them i.e., high resolution, high definition, 300 dpi or higher. It's best if you send the illustrations separately as email attachments, as .jpg or .tiff or .gif files. When you include an illustration in a Word file, Word normally reduces the resolution of the image unless you take special steps to prevent that. Lowquality images print badly. If you only have a poor quality version of an illustration, we can manipulate it to produce a highresolution version that will meet KDP's requirements. However, in that case it may look a bit blurry in the print edition. (This is not an issue for the ebook, only the print version.) You can also send us a sharp, clear printed version of an image; we can scan that.

Note: Including interior color greatly increases the price of the printed book, making it unattractive to most potential customers. Therefore, for the printed book, we convert all interior images to grayscale. The color versions are still used in the ebooks, however. Also, the cover of the printed book is in full color.

Once the files have been uploaded, there's a delay of a day or two while KDP checks the files to make sure that they adhere to specifications. Once that has been done, an email is sent to the account holder (you) saying that the files are okay and it's time to check the proof. We order a printed proof and have it delivered to our house so that we can do a final check for typos or other problems. We have found that it's always best to do this because it's easier to see some problems in the physical, printed book than when the Word file is displayed on the screen. We correct any such errors and upload the PDF file for the book again. There's a delay of another day or so while KDP checks the new file. Once that checking is complete, KDP emails you again to say that the proof is ready for examination. At this point, we check the proof online, on the KDP site, using a viewer program that KDP provides. If the proof looks all right (in practice, it always does by this point), we approve the book for sale. At this point, you can order copies for yourself from KDP at the low author price. We will send you the URL for ordering the book. You can take those copies with you to sell at full price when you speak to audiences.

It takes up to a day for the printed book to be available on Amazon.com for the general public to buy. It takes a few more days before it's available on other Amazon sites, and generally a week or two before it shows up on Barnes Amazon sites.

The books are produced by means of Print on Demand technology, or POD. This means that a single copy of the book is printed at high speed when a customer orders it. There are many advantages to POD, but one drawback is that the cover price of POD books is higher than that of books printed in the traditional way. See below for more information about the price you'll be charging for your book.

Cover Price and Royalties

You choose the cover price for your books. You have a great deal of leeway in this, but there are some restrictions.

EBooksSmashwords

On Smashwords, you can set the price of your ebook at zero i.e., you can give it away. However, statistics compiled by Smashwords indicate that ebooks sell the most copies at a price range of $2.99 to $4.99. You can make the price much higher, but consumers tend to be leery of paying a lot for ebooks. If you're not a famous person with a large fan following, it's probably best to stay in the $2.99 to $4.99 range.

For ebooks sold directly from the Smashwords website, you'll earn 85% of the cover price. When a book is sold elsewhere, such as the Barnes Smashwords then pays you 85% of whatever they receive from Barnes that's the option we use for our own books. If the amount owed to you is less than $10, it is held in your account instead of being paid to you. You can choose to receive payment via check instead. In that case, you'll only receive payment if the amount owed to you is $100 or more; otherwise, the money is held in your account.

Amazon

On Amazon, the royalty picture is a bit more complicated.

The minimum price you can set for your ebook is 99 cents. At that price, you earn 35% in royalties. If you set the price from $2.99 up to $9.99, you can choose the 70% royalty option. Above $9.99, the royalty rate drops back to 35%. In addition, to qualify for the 70% royalty rate, the price of the ebook must be at least 20% below the price of any physical version of the book (i.e., print edition) currently on sale.

The royalty is paid on the price you set for the book minus the VAT (Value Added Tax) that is charged for ebook sales in some countries, and also minus a small "delivery charge," the size of which depends on the size of your ebook file. It generally seems to be a few cents per book, or even zero for very short books i.e., small files.

The 70% royalty rate is not available for books sold on the Amazon sites in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and India, unless your book is enrolled in Amazon's KDP Select Program. However, enrolling your book in KDP Select means that you cannot sell it on other sites, such as the Apple store, Barnes books are sold in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and Germany, countries that do qualify for the 70% royalty rate, it's not worth worrying about the lower royalty rate in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and India.

And finally, Amazon lowers the price of your ebook to match a lower price on other bookselling sites. So, for example, if you decide to price your book at 99 for a week or two on Smashwords, Amazon might notice that and lower the price of the book on Amazon to 99at which point the Amazon royalty rate for the book drops to 35% because the price no longer falls within the $2.99$9.99 range. Fortunately, once you raise the price back to $2.99 or above on Smashwords, Amazon will raise the price, and therefore the royalty rate, on Amazon.com, as well, but that might not happen for a few days.

Here, too, a good price range is $2.99 to $5.99, unless the book is very short, in which case you should charge less. If you're selling your book on Amazon and also via Smashwords, then you should make it the same price on both. Be sure that you don't make it more expensive on Amazon than on Smashwords. As mentioned above, Amazon's software will discover that it's for sale elsewhere at a lower price and then automatically lower the price on Amazon to match that lower price. If that lower price is zero, there's a chance that Amazon's software will decide that you are a pirate and not the real owner of the book, and it will shut down your account, requiring a lot of time and trouble on your part to convince Amazon that you really are the owner of the rights to the book.

Amazon pays royalties every month, but with a twomonth delay. For example, you receive payment at the end of March for books sold during January. Amazon pays via direct deposit to your bank account.

Print Books

KDP calculates a minimum price for your book based on the size (height and width), the number of pages, the type of paper (white or cream colored), and whether the content is black and white or requires color printing. You can then add as much as you want to that price. The amount you add is your profit royalties per book.

If you're using color in your book, then you can only choose white paper. Otherwise, you can choose cream. Cream paper raises the minimum price a bit. Also, in our opinion, the print looks sharper and clearer on white paper.

If your print book is sold on a nonAmazon site, such as Barnes published, all marketing and advertising fall on your shoulders.

Make sure that all of your friends and relatives know about the book. Announce it on every website you can think of Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, your professional organizations, etc. If you have a personal website, add a page for the book (here's an example). If you don't have a personal website, we can add a page to ours that will serve the same purpose. Here's an example of one that we did for one of our clients. We can also make up a flyer that you can hand out to people.

You can buy ads for your book on various websites, but in our experience, that's a waste of money. The exception might be if your book has niche appeal. For example, if it's a book about surveying techniques, you'd want to advertise it to surveyors. You might also consider doing that if it's a novel about a surveyor.

Contact local writers' organizations to see if they'd like to have you give a talk about your book and your experience with selfpublishing. Take copies of the book with you to sell. Take business cards with you that include your website URL (or the URL of the page we've created for you on our website). If you've written a genre novel i.e., science fiction, fantasy, horror, mystery/crime, romance, Western start attending any local conventions for that genre, if you're not already doing so, and get yourself on panels at the conventions. Always have a copy of your book with you to show the audience at the panel, as well as business cards to hand out.

Several of our clients have had us order 4inch x 6inch bookad cards for them from VistaPrint. One side shows the book's cover in full color, and the other side provides the synopsis and the author's contact information. The cards are very high quality, reasonably priced, handy to carry around and distribute, or to display at a signing event or literary convention. Our clients say that the cards are an effective marketing tool.

Selfpublished books don't get reviewed in major publications. Your hometown newspaper might be willing to review your book, but if your hometown is a big city, the newspaper will probably ignore you. Fortunately, there are a lot of review websites. Use Google to find them and try to get a review that way. However, don't assume that a good review will result in a lot of sales.

Unfortunately, you shouldn't expect a lot of sales in any case. Your book won't be in bookstores or on the racks in the supermarket, where casual browsers can discover it. Selfpublishing no longer has as great a stigma as it used to, but it still doesn't get much respect. You do read about selfpublished books that become huge successes, and we can hope that this will become more common, but it's still a rare event. Enter into this adventure for the satisfaction of having written and published a good book that you can be proud of. And then get to work on the next book.

Books Edited and Produced by David and Leonore DvorkinAs of February 2015

TAGS:DLD Books self-publishing indiepublishing Smashwords KDP Amazon Kindle printedit

<<< Thank you for your visit >>>

Editing and self-publishing services.

Hot Websites