This is a great post from our Director of Production at Tate Publishing. He discusses POD or Print-On-Demand publishers and what you get with them. Check out his blog: Is Your Publisher “Print-On Demand?”

Print on Demand or self-publishers are very tricky to figure out. This is why we have created a situation at Tate Publishing that if your book is accepted for publication, you don’t have to worry about anything. You will have the best service, production, distribution and marketing and more products to release to the marketplace than you could get from anywhere else. I personally hate how self-publishers will tell you that you can publish a book for next to nothing!!! Then when you decide you want layout, cover design, editing, and marketing you realize that this “you can publish for nothing” publisher has turned into a $10,000 dollar expense. In addition, please don’t ever publish a book without professional assistance, it is the only way to guarantee your product can even have a chance.

This time last year several of my executive staff and I visited a large self-publisher in North Carolina, LULU Press, I was shocked to see that they don’t even have one editor on staff. Now, they claim to be a do-it-yourself publisher, but editors should just be part of a publishers core staff.

Tate Publishing offers the best in the industry and we would never leave our authors to go it alone, it just isn’t right. Here is my post about why Tate is so different! Finally, we would never offer a choose your package style of publishing, an author should not have to decide what they need, an author should have confidence that their publisher will take care of them and their book will be beautiful in the end and be supported from beginning to bookstore! That is our desire and that is the environment we have created. Tate Publishing has the highest sales volumes out of any publisher because of our selectivity and the professionalism behind the finished product. I thank God everyday that we have such great authors in our family. Once again, check out Dave’s post, I think you will like it!

Ryan Tate

I want to thank TC and Cathy for their comments over the weekend and this question is for you as you are trying to figure out how to handle and maneuver through the publishing industry.

Now, the questions is whether or not an author should ever pay to have their book or manuscript published? This is an easy answer, an author always pays to have their book published. For example, if Random House approached you as an author and offered you a $1 million dollar advance. You would think that is the best thing ever and by the way you should take it, but it is an advance. The truth is that you won’t see another dime until you have repaid the advance or your book has accumulated enough from your royalties to repay them. So sure you didn’t pay up front, but you and the results from your work are definitely paying for it, just over a longer period of time.

The publishing industry today has many options available to you. You can self-publish, subsidy publish, partnership publish or traditionally publish. All of these are great options, what is more important is for an author to decide what is the best option for them in their situation.

When looking for a publisher, what I would concern myself with the most is not whether or not there is a fee involved, I would concern myself with two things:

1. How selective is the publishing house? A publisher needs to be selective in what they publish, these helps keep the brand quality in tact and makes sure that you won’t be lost in an author pool of ten’s of thousands of authors. This is one of the main complaints about self-publishers, they take everybody! So make sure there is a submission, review and acceptance process. In addition, make sure that if your manuscript is rejected, that you submitted to a publishing house that can give you feedback as to why, this will help you grow as a writer and make your next attempt even better.

2. How does the publisher market, distribute and publicize their products? See my last post, “What does distribution for your book really mean?” for more information about this issue. The most important things to make sure of are the following criteria. Does this publisher stock inventory with retailers, wholesalers and distributors? Is 100% of the publishers book product returnable? Does the publisher pay for every book put into distribution at no cost to the author? Many publishers claim they have great distribution, but your book will only be listed in a database or on websites. Ask these questions and you will make a great decision for your book.

At Tate Publishing we have prided ourselves in offering authors more than any other publisher in the industry. No one comes close to what Tate offers, they try or make claims, but the difference is huge. I would encourage you to read some of my other posts to learn more and please keep your questions or subjects you wold like discussed coming my way! As always I am praying for you and look forward to future discussions.

Ryan Tate

BTW, we are very sad here at Tate Publishing today since the University of Texas beat the University of Oklahoma in football over the weekend!!! We will get you next year longhorns!

This is one of the questions that our acquisitions team is asked the most.  It is also probably the most misunderstood question for first-time authors.  

Well, I am very excited to begin the process of helping all of you out there not only understand the publishing industry in general, but specifically about the wonderful options and opportunities available to you at Tate Publishing that no one else can offer!

1. Editing – Copyediting, Technical Editing and Conceptual Editing
2. Custom Cover Design – Our in house design team will work with you to create the perfect cover, and back-matter that helps your book stand out on any shelf.
3. Custom Interior Layout – Your layout artist will once again work with you to make sure that the inside of the book is just as beutiful and attractive as the outside.  
4. Ebook Creation and distribution – Every title is available to download as an ebook from our website and other online retailers for ease and instant use.
5. Audiobook creation and distribution – Tate Publishing produces our books as audiobooks as well, we are the largest provider of audiobooks to Apple iTunes and audible.com and have created another opportunity that no other publisher can for our authors to succeed and this gives a Tate author one more advantage over the competition.  
6. Website design and hosting – What better way to promote than through your own website, while this can be difficult and confusing on your own we create the website for you and host it so it never costs you a dime.  Plus it gives a constant online presence for promoting and selling your work.
7. Video book trailers and commercials – These commercials have become an amazing opportunity and tool for our marketing department and authors.  The commercials are streaming from YouTube to our website bookstore, news reports and televisions worldwide.  We have more books sold and recognized from these videos than could have every been expected.
8. Marketing – You are assigned an actual marketing rep that manages distribution, availability and sets up events for you worldwide.
9. Publicity – Every event and book is promoted to local and national media for the life of the work.   We use several different publicity firms to promote you and your events, but our favorite is Key Marketing Group Communications. 
10. Distribution – Tate Publishing product is all 100% returnable and warehoused and not simply made available for order or on a list.  We have direct relationships with every major retailer, distributor and wholesaler and provide product directly to their warehouses and are even in the large publishing division with Barnes & Noble, no one else comes close!