Halo Publishing International - Full Service Self-Publishing ?

Another self-publishing company for your consideration...Halo Publishing International (HPI) has been in business since 2002 and guides you through the self-publishing process for both printed and digital books.

Halo appears to have the expertise and connections to handle all the myriad details of publishing plus the marketing AND distribution through the nation's largest: Ingram Distribution. Ingram captures the demand from booksellers, libraries and consumers.

The only thing I could not determine this late on Saturday were the costs. So, I can't assess if they are reasonable or not...But, you can follow the link and contact them directly...Looks like they will build a price for you based on your needs and budget.

This press release from PR-inside.com:

Valley View, OH, July 02, 2010 -- As Sue Lunquist, one of Halo's authors, who published her own book, also known as self-publishing, eloquently sums up her experience with Halo Publishing International ( http://www.halopublishing.com/ ) and its founder Lisa M. Umina, it is not only the services offered by a publishing company that creates success but also the expertise, passion and enthusiasm of the actual people who are involved in helping to accomplish the mission. "As in life, finding ‘trust’ combined with a ‘can do’ attitude is an unlikely commodity. With Halo Publishing International, ( www.halopublishing.com ) they have ‘it’; ‘It’ being; trust, wealth of knowledge, creativity, honesty and a proven, successful track record. I am proud to be affiliated with Halo Publishing ( www.halopublishing.com ) as their team goes way beyond a ‘typical’ job description."

Self-publishing can be a wonderful solution for getting into print as it puts an author in control of his or her own destiny and positions them to be a lot more profitable than going with a typical royalty publisher
. Self-publishing also offers an advantage in that the writer keeps approximately 95% of the profits as opposed to the less than $1 most royalty publishers offer. With Halo Publishing’s process, ( www.halopublishing.com ) the author controls everything: cover design, title, printer choice, promotion, book marketing strategies, sales, rights and after market deals. Self-publishing involves a lot of details, decisions, and determination, making it seem to some, pretty overwhelming. That is precisely why self- publishing resources like Halo Publishing International exist! At Halo Publishing International, ( www.halopublishing.com ) they have "been there and done that" many times over and are often able to save their authors from making expensive mistakes. They often tell authors to think of them like a handy Swiss Army knife in that they possess all the necessary tools to lead their writers to greater success and profits when utilizing them to self-publish a book.

Press Contact:
Christine Folgmann
Halo Publishing International LLC
5549 Canal Road
Valley View, OH 44125
877-705-9647
christine@halopublishing.com
www.halopublishing.com

Territorial Publishing Laws

What's with territorial publishing laws? Seems they are almost Mafia-influenced!

At any rate, these sets of laws can rain havoc with getting your book, eBooks or what-have-you published across countries...And it shouldn't be so, especially in this age of instant technology.

John Birmingham, an Australian author and The Geek blogger on the The Sydney Morning Herald, gives a good insight into how these arcane territorial publishing laws have worked in the past and why they should be changed:

Book tours are cool, but they're very olde worlde. Hell, they're cool because they're so olde worlde. Your eminent scribbler lazes about the more significant capitals, checking into fine hotels, visiting favourite bookshoppes, gathering with like-minded coves of an evening over a few drinks to tell tall tales and inscribe the odd monogram on the occasional tome.

Aye, it's all grande.

The book tour I'm doing at the moment, however, is a little different from all that have gone previously because I'm pimping it via Twitter and Farcebuck and the matrix of blogs I maintain. It's cool, because I get to finally catch up in 3D with a lot of peeps who've previously only ever been known to me as their internet handles and avatars, but there is one drawback: a problem of the old and new rubbing up hard against each other.

Every time I promo After America online it reminds overseas readers that the book is now out here in Vegemiteland, but won't be available in their part of the real world for weeks (US and New Zealand), and in some cases months (say, Germany or Poland). It gets people right hacked off it does.

Having grown used to a world where everything seems instantly available - unless it's a flash-based website on your iPad - they find it hard to accept that their desire to read something right now can be foiled by a scheme as arcane and out-of-date as the nineteenth-century territorial arrangements struck between the major English language book publishers. This is the deal where the world gets divided up into zones, just like for DVD releases, with companies from specific countries controlling what gets published in each zone.

In some cases, where a book has no local publisher, it would seem that the net would be able to provide succour, but unfortunately that's not always the case. For instance After America has no British publisher, because all of the houses it was offered to described it as 'too American' to work there. They're probably right, in mass market terms. And yet there undoubtedly exists some market for books like it that could be serviced by electronic means via the Kindle or iBookstore or some other system... if the territorial rules did not apply.

I've got my minions working on this at the moment, so that readers in the UK can access to the ebook when it's released, but those minions are having to work very, very hard at squirming through some very, very awkward and tiny loopholes.

It raises the question of how long the old way of doing things in book publishing can last. I've written before that books are different from recorded music and film, because they don't strictly have to be offered in electronic form. But one of the things the online piracy wars should have taught us is that if there is a demand for something, it will be met - by illegitimate means if necessary.

It's less of an issue for a smaller, mid-list product like mine, but even having just a few thousand potential readers in a place like the UK virtually ensures that as soon as After America is available in ebook format somewhere in the world, it will be available everywhere, whether the territorial publishing laws allow for it or not.

Kindle Has App for Android, But...

You can now download Kindle formatted books to your Google Android smartphones and other devices using the Google Android operating system...But, the Kindle app for Android comes with some kinks (the little deviant)...Maybe you should hold off a little longer purchasing one until Kindle irons out the bumps!

Brent W. Hopkins, PC World, reported this review:

Kindle for Android provides another way to access and read your purchased Amazon Kindle e-books, but it lacks key features and is awkward to set up.

When Amazon released its proprietary Kindle e-reader, it transformed the publishing industry. Then the company delivered a version of its e-reader for the iPhone. Now Android users get a slice of the e-book action with the new Kindle app for Android. This app allows you to access and read your purchased (or free) Kindle e-books on your Android smartphone, and it automatically bookmarks the page where you left off reading.

To use this app you must first log in to your Amazon account. If you don't already have one, you need to leave the app and create an account in a Web browser, which is unfortunate; it's an indicator of poor design when the user must leave an app to take advantage of core functionality.

But wait, you're not ready to return to the app yet. First you need to configure your 1-Click settings, and then you can browse the Amazon catalog and select your book(s)--with your Web browser, not with the Android app. Boo, hiss!

You can create bookmarks as you go, and jump to a specific location in the text. Unfortunately, the locations don't correspond to print-version page numbers; they are local and specific to your Android device. And though the menu has an entry for Go To My Notes & Marks, the app gives you no way to make notes, and no method to sync your Android bookmarks between devices. You can't search the text, either.

That last omission is a pity, because a search function would have been convenient for following along as your English class covers Great Expectations or one of the other expired-copyright classics of literature available for free on Amazon. In its current iteration, Kindle for Android provides a way to access and read your Kindle e-books, but it lacks key features and is awkward to set up.

Kindle Offers 70% Royalty for Self-Publishers

When was the last time an author made $6.25 per book on an $8.99 hardcover book?... NEVER!

But, self-published authors CAN realize that kind of money today...on Kindle DTP (Digital Text Platform)...A little improvement in the usual chickenfeed for authors.

I have been devoting some past posts editorializing about the eBook vs printed book race and the growth of the digital book market share...and I feel this press release from the Financial Post further demonstrates the burgeoning self-publishing digital book world (and the publishing-player-field-leveler, if you will):

Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: AMZN) today announced that the 70 percent royalty option that enables authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell is now available. For each book sold from the Kindle Store for Kindle, Kindle DX, or one of the Kindle apps for iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, PC, Mac and Android phones, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of the list price, net of delivery costs.

Delivery costs are based on file size, and pricing is set at $0.15/MB. At today’s median DTP file size of 368KB, delivery costs would be less than $0.06 per unit sold. For example, on an $8.99 book an author would make $3.15 with the standard option and $6.25 with the new 70 percent option. This new option, first announced in January 2010, will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option.

In addition to the 70 percent royalty option, Amazon also announced improvements in DTP such as a more intuitive “Bookshelf” feature and a simplified two-step process for publishing. These features make it more convenient for authors and publishers to publish using DTP.

“We’re excited about the launch of the 70 percent royalty option and user experience enhancements in DTP because they enable authors and publishers to conveniently offer more content to Kindle customers and to make more money from the books they sell,” said Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content.

DTP authors and publishers are now able to select the royalty option that best meets their needs. Books from authors and publishers who choose the 70 percent royalty option will have access to all the same features and be subject to all the same requirements as books receiving the standard royalty rate. In addition, to qualify for the 70 percent royalty option, books must satisfy the following set of requirements:

•The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99.
•The list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest list price for the physical book.
•The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights.
•The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.
•Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices.

The 70 percent royalty option is for in-copyright works and is unavailable for works published before 1923 (a.k.a. public domain books). The 70 percent royalty option is currently only available for books sold to United States customers.

DTP is a fast and easy self-publishing tool that lets anyone upload and format their books for sale in the Kindle Store (www.amazon.com/kindlestore). To learn more about the Kindle Digital Text Platform, visit http://dtp.amazon.com/ or e-mail dtp-support@amazon.com

Kindle is in stock and available for immediate shipment today at http://www.amazon.com/kindle.

Award-winning Author Chooses E-book Over Print Publishing Deal !

Are eBooks starting to win the race with printed hardcover books? This post gives an example of one established, award-winning author who has chosen to bypass a printed publishing deal (hardcover book would have sold for $27.95) for publishing on Amazon for $1.99 per digital copy...He is going for quantity readers over fewer who would/could shell out $27.95 for a book...

I'm betting he will get enough increase in numbers of readers over the vast internet to offset the cheaper price...and then some, maybe...But, I don't know. I will be following up to find out the result...One thing for sure, he will be getting 50% to 80% of the digital sales price...which is probably approaching what he would get from the $27.95 hardcover price after big publishing and the associated companies take their cut...You know 80% of $1.99 vs 7% of $27.95...

This press release is from prweb.com:

Author takes bold move toward the future of publishing.


Award-winning novelist Gary Ponzo (pictured) is prepared to gamble his literary career on the strength of the growing digital book business. He’s turned down a print publishing deal for his novel, “A Touch of Deceit,” in order to publish it as an ebook on Amazon.

“I had to decide what’s more important to me,” Ponzo said. “Do I want profit or do I want readers. Inevitably I chose readers.”

The publishing company sold only hardcover books and the retail price was $27.95. Ponzo felt this was too much to ask in this economic environment. “I don’t want to throw the publisher under the bus, they’re a good honest company. They’re just stuck in an old business model. I felt uncomfortable asking my own mother to spend thirty bucks on my novel. It’s the digital age and I needed to adjust my thinking.”

Ponzo’s novel “A Touch of Deceit,” won the 2009 Southwest Writers Contest, Thriller category. He’s an award-winning author who’s published numerous short stories including two which were nominated for the very prestigious Pushcart Prize. His ebook is available as a digital download on Amazon for just $1.99.

“I spoke with author Karen McQuestion who’s sold over 36,000 ebooks on Amazon,” Ponzo said, “and she recommended I keep the price down. That's the price she felt she had the most success with.”

“A Touch of Deceit,” is a thriller about FBI agent Nick Bracco who recruits his mafia-connected cousin to track down a terrorist in Washington D.C.

Media contact: Gary Ponzo
Website: www.garyponzo.com

Current Rapid and Predicted E-books Growth Will Force Publishing Changes

The eBook explosion will indeed force "big publishing" industry changes...and at the forefront will be the expulsion of entrenched bad leadership...which I feel has gotten worse over the past 30 years or so...

As reported by Reuters and published in the Economic Times:

Stieg Larsson copycats take note: The slow rise of electronic books is paving the way for more safe-bet fiction blockbusters and serial-type books, at least in the short term, according to some book experts.

With book sales stagnating in recent years, the nascent e-books market has thrown the industry into turmoil. In response, large publishers are taking fewer financial risks and betting more of their dollars on established authors, said Eileen Gittins of self-publishing company Blurb.com.

John's Note: Hell, "big publishing" has been doing this for the past 25 years...long before the emergence of eBooks!

"In the face of these economics, publishers just cannot take the risk," said Gittins. "They need some sure wins."

John's Note: The hell they do...they stacked the deck for sure wins years ago! Mostly at the expense of new writers and creators. Traditional publishers haven't taken a risk in so long they've forgotten how to spell the word. Their excessive greed is why they won't or can't adapt to the new business models...Traditional publishing days are over and good riddance.

Similar to movie studios' betting on well-known franchises to bring box office gold, Gittins said publishers want to market more blockbuster authors writing serial books featuring a distinctive leading character to lure repeat readers, as was seen with the success of prolific, late Swedish author Stieg Larsson, or crime fiction writers such as Michael Connelly.

With prices on the fledging e-book market still being battled over among larger publishers and makers of electronic readers, publishers still have yet to profit much from e-books, with the lower priced e-books eating into profit margins.

The e-book market has grown rapidly with wholesale revenue from e-book sales in the United States increasing to $91 million in the first quarter of 2010 from $55.9 million from the last quarter of 2009, according to International Digital Publishing Forum. But e-book sales still only account for 5-6 per cent of overall US book sales and less than 1 per cent in Britain, The Financial Times reported this week.

Contrary to popular opinion, most of publishers' costs are developing and marketing authors, not the cost of printing and shipping books. Such costs don't lessen with e-books even though they sell for less than paper books, Gittins said.

John's Note: Oh, so NOW the old printing, binding and shipping costs were nothing? Pure BS...The marketing of authors has ALWAYS been a core mission of publishing, one they gave up on years ago when they put this burden on the author himself (this is why they haven't made good money on new writers)...This single act of abdicating core mission responsibilities was, in my opinion, the beginning of the end for traditional publishing.

Remember, good writers can learn publishing (especially today with new technology) easier than publishers can learn to be good writers!

That heightens pressure "to need to do blockbuster big titles because now there is even more pressure on them," said Gittins. "They are not really saving money with the e-book, all those costs are still there."

Book experts predict in the e-book market, bestselling authors will remain popular in the short term. According to Amazon, all three of Stieg Larsson's books, which include sensation "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," sit in the top five best-selling books on Amazon's Kindle reader.

Customer favorites for e-books include "great Summer reads" such as Stephenie Meyer's new novella.

Daily Beast book editor Lucas Wittmann said in five years e-book sales could reach levels to make up for lost paper book sales, but for now publishers are feeling the pinch.

"There is a big squeeze right now," said Wittmann. "All the great predictions for e-books haven't quite been realized yet. E-books are growing at an astounding rate but they are not yet making up for the lost (book) sales."

When e-books first hit the market, some nonfiction economic and political books fared well, but now as the e-book audience had widened, more fiction is selling, he said.

"Publishers are still experimenting," Wittmann added.

Publishers Weekly Editorial Director Jim Milliot said online sites such as Amazon.com encourage readers to buy the same author, while smaller publishers were slow on e-books.

"A lot of the independent publishers have been slower to move to put their titles on, mainly because they don't have the resources to do it," he said. "Fiction seems to be winning out, at least in the early going."

As electronic readers improve, the type of e-books that sell well could change. Improving graphics could help genres like nonfiction and children's books become more popular.

"The possibilities seem to be opening up for more graphic work, incorporating multimedia and embedding links to audio when you are reading a biography of Bach or something," Wittmann said, predicting such advances in a year or two.

Wittmann said there will still be some "pain in the industry" but diversity and change was coming.

"Most publishers...are warming to e-books and thinking creatively about them," he said. "The only question is the time frame ... when we see a truly dramatic shift."

A Lower Level of Hell !

My half day in a lower level of hell today could be fodder for a story...But, I'm just going to vent now.

Today started off bad for me!

First, a little background: I have been having my second car, a Kia Sportage (the one I let my daughter and son-in-law use), diagnosed for intermittent starting...Seems this problem can be caused by several different things (isn't that always the f--king case). Anyway, during the engine analysis the starter turned out fine, then the sensors checked out OK, then the fuel pump was given a clean bill of health (thank God for that, a fuel pump costs approx $330)...mind you, this took four damn days since everytime the mechanics tried to start the Kia IT WOULD START! (I should have made my son-in-law stay with them, nothing works for him!)

The car needed to act up (not start) before the engine diagnostic plug-in to the car computer could send back codes indicating bad sensors, etc, etc...

SOOOO, Mr. Mechanic finally said he had the problem narrowed down to a bad main relay...GOOD, these are cheap (around $19) and I could just unplug the bad one and plug in a new one...They're very accessible, right up front and on top in front of the battery on my Kia...I pay Mr. Mechanic money for his testing and drive the Kia home (it starts most of the time...and when it acts up it just takes LONGER to kick over)...A real pain.

Second, fastforward to this morning: I go out to the garage to get the relay serial number off the relay (needed to buy the right one)...It's a little dark and I can't see the raised number on the black casing of the relay, so I start pulling the relay out of the socket (much like an electrical plug in a house outlet)...It's a little tight and comes out only after I wiggle it a little. THEN, just when it releases I drop the damn thing and it falls into the cracks and crevices of the engine jungle below! NEVER TO BE FOUND AGAIN!

And I mean NEVER to be found again! I got a flashlight and scrutinized every square inch that I could see where the 1.5" by 1.5" by 1.5" cubed-shaped relay could have fallen...I peered down from the top of the engine and I crawled under the car and peered up through the engine...and guess what?...NOTHING! The damned cube-from-hell disappeared!

There is no way a cubed-shape thing that big could not be seen...UNLESS God was punishing me for something! Or maybe everything I'd ever done bad in my entire life!

So, I have to drive my daughter and son-in-law to work in my Explorer...Another pain-in-the-ass errand I don't need today! I'm sinking lower and lower in this hell-day.

THEN, I go to the Kia dealer to simply buy a new relay and guess what?...They don't have any in stock! I have to order and it will take 6 days for delivery! UNLESS I pay an extra ten bucks for overnight which means Monday since this is Friday...I'm really sinking into the lower levels of hell now!

I order the damn relay and give up the extra ten bucks for faster delivery...It seems I'm at the bottom of hell.

Third, after more searching for the dropped relay to no avail (it truly disappeared) and checking all the other auto parts stores here in Pueblo with no success, I plopped down in front of my computer, put my hands behind my head and leaned back in a black, pissed-on-like mood.

All of a sudden, while my mind was ambling aimlessly in this "why-me-self-pitying" state, an idea hit me (MUST have been from an Angel sent from above) "John, check the junk cars salvage yard for used parts!"

My day may just be on the mend...

I hurried to the foreign cars salvage yard. The tattooed, young man behind the counter said "Go out back, take the farthest left alley of cars and the Kia's should be half-way down.

I stumble out the back door in the 94 degree F heat and finally find the Kia's...The first one I walked up to had the whole engine missing, but upon closer examination I find the relay box dangling down by an electrical cable and resting against the inside wheel base. I quickly pop the top of the relay box and eureka, there are two almost new-looking main relays with the correct serial numbers!

I unplug the relays and walk back inside the office. "I found some relays, how much do I owe you?"

"Nothing," says Tattoo, "just come back when you have something bigger."

Oh my God, I'm being smiled on from above again!

And thus, when I was at my lowest on this hell day, God took a little pity on a poor, dumb, wannabe-everything-but-am-just---me!