How Your Book Gets from Your Brain into Final Form
Write your book
- Create the best work you can.
- Get as much help as possible. A writer's workshop is a great place to start.
- If you're not sure what it takes to create a good "read", you may not be ready. Read the blog series How to Write a Salable Book or Novel. There are a lot of other good articles on our blog site that can help you to improve your writing and market the results.
- Create a manuscript that reflects proper English usage (grammar, spelling, and punctuation), with the possible exception of dialog. We don't have time to babysit manuscripts that are full of errors. Turn on your word processor's spell checker and the grammar checker if it has one. Pay attention to the warnings. Look for properly spelled words that are still wrong ("to" instead of "too" for instance).
- Polish (edit) it until it shines. Some of the top pros in the business rewrite their mss as often as 20 times. Good writing is hard work.
- Remember, the first 1000 or so words will sell or kill your book. Make them count.
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THIS IS IMPORTANT. When you submit your manuscript for publication, you will automatically agree to the terms of the agreement under the "partial delivery" provisions of U.S. contract laws in the Uniform Commercial Code which the state of Washington has adopted. No signature is necessary if there is partial delivery. So, UNDERSTAND THE AGREEMENT BEFORE YOU GO ANY FURTHER.
There are notes after the actual agreement that may help you to understand some of the terms and the "why" behind them.
When in doubt, always consult a reliable attorney.
By the way, the artwork, including the cover, are your responsibility. That's one of the reasons we can afford to pay you a 50% royalty.
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Send an inquiry to us
E-mail a query letter describing your project. If your work includes graphic sex, be sure to convince us that it's not pornography or erotica. If it even smells like kiddie porn, you'll get rejected. Don't argue about our policy.
Use this form: CLICK HERE.
If we are interested in your project, we'll send you a special email address for authors to use for all future correspondence.
Send us the first chapter or first 1000 words (whichever is longer) of your book in MS Word 2000, RTF, or text format. If you have a newer version of WORD, please "save as" WORD 2000 format or RTF. Our software won't handle the new .docx format (a Microsoft artifice intended to make everyone buy the 'latest and greatest').
If we like your submission, we'll contact you with instructions on sending in the rest of the book.
Don't do anything else until we approve your book unless you intend to spend the time/effort even if it's rejected.
If we approve the entire book we'll ask you to do the following:
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Get your artwork together
- If this step is a surprise, then you didn't read the agreement section. Go back and do that.
- Find a cover artist (if you aren't one yourself) who will produce a cover that will help to sell your book. A poor cover can kill sales in some genre's. If we're REALLY impressed with your book, we may negotiate on this point, but you'll make more money if you can get the cover done yourself.
- Assemble internal graphics such as pictures and drawings.
- Convert all artwork to digital format using our graphics guidelines.
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Convert your book to "final" format
Follow our Preparation Guidelines
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Submit your book
- Set a price for your book. For guidelines, click here. Tell us the price in the email accompanying your submission.
- Tell us which categories in which you think your book should be listed.
- Read our rating chart and tell us as honestly as you can, what rating your book should have. Please be conservative. We're both better off avoiding the slings and arrows of outraged parents.
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Editing
Our editors will check your manuscript for completeness, grammar, techniques, and spot check it for compliance with our requirements. We will not rewrite it for you.
We will convert your work into several formats for "e-reading" and store them in our catalog as "variations".
We will include your book and cover art in our catalog and create a page devoted to your book.
Remember our comment about your first 1000 words? Well, here's where your work pays off. We may create a page with the first 1000 words of your book for customers to review before purchasing your book, and link to it from your "product" page. If another section will sell the book better, we may use that.
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Marketing
AKW will list your book and do some marketing. You should also do several things. For the full story, click here.
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Payment
You will need a PayPal account if you wish to be paid royalties on a quarterly basis.
Every quarter we will send you a statement of sales and earnings to your email address of record.
If we owe you more than $5.00 (USD), we will make a deposit into your PayPal account if you have given us your PayPal email address.
If you don't have a PayPal account and live in the United States, we will review your account quarterly (every three months) and send a check to your address of record if we owe you more than $10.00 (USD). If you live outside of the U.S.A., we'll send a check if we owe you more than $25.00 (USD).
All payments will be in United States currency via PayPal or check.
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